Chocolate Wrappings & Game Packs
by Armour-Duck
Summary: A story about Mello and Matt, as they grow up at Wammy's and eventually moves on. Friends, drama and a lot of mischief.  I suck at summaries; set in Mello's POV. Ratings will most likely increase later.
1. First Sight

**AN: Yeah, this is probably kind of lame and full with typos... But it's my first DN-fanfic ever, so don't be too rough on me, ok?**  
**Warnings: Err, nothing right here except swearing... And mentions of death. (But if you have a problem with that, I can't see why the fuck you're in the DN section. Just so you know.)  
**  
**Also, this will be written mostly in Mello POV, but I might switch to Matt occasionally, but not too often. Anyway, let's move on to the story.**

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I knew from first sight I'd like it.

The second I laid my eyes on the mansion I fell in love with it. Though, sadly, the mood was somewhat ruined by the annoying albino punk I'd gotten there with.

"So... this is Wammy's house." _No shit, sherlock._ The kid's voice was full of... Nothing, really. I understood on the ride here that he wasn't really the emotional one. In any way.

Though, the old man next to me just smiled.

"Yes, and I hope you will both be happy here." I looked up at him, and his old eyes met mine. "Right now it seems a bit empty, but that's only because classes haven't finished yet. They end at three in the afternoon, so you'll have a while to install yourself."

A while as in two hours, I thought. But that's okay. After all, this place is like heaven. (I know, barely inside the front gates and I already think of it as heaven. But after all, this is marble and well-cut hedges; for an eleven-year-old orphan boy it's_ heaven_.)

And trust me, I was eternally greatfull as I smiled back at the old man known as Wammy himself.

As we walked inside the big mansion, Wammy explained more about the place. He had told us some in the ride here - a ride in a limo, awesome - but there seemed to be tons of stuff left to know.

I quickly realized, though, it would take some time to learn my way around here, the place is huge, but apart from that I was happy. Or, as happy as I could be, considering my parents just died.

After all, I was going to have a home and it was going to be a home worthy of my genius. Not just to brag, but trust me; I am a genius.

The only thing that bothered me was the albino punk. He's two years younger than me, but still acts like he was four. (_Seriously, pajamas?_) And the fact that he didn't seem to listen at all bugged me.

I mean, the man to my left had just saved us from living (most likely) tragic lives on the streets, and the fucking kid doesn't even listen to what he says? I mean, for fucks sake. He is my cousin, but still, the lack of interest bugged the hell out of me.

Anyway, this is getting boring, huh? Let's just move on from that albino psych.

Wammy showed us our rooms, on the top floor, far to the left. I would be sharing room with another boy, Near would have his own. (By the way, I think I skipped the part where we got new names... Not too interesting though, we got to choose them ourselves. Why the kid picked Near I have no idea, but mine was obviuos. I had called myself Mello for months.)

In the same corridor lived two other boys, sharing rooms, and five girls. Two in each room, but the fifth girl had her own. Like the boys, but... y'now, they were girls.

After Wammy showed us the bathrooms and showers, he left us to get settled after informing us his office was nearby in case we wanted something.

I quickly got into my room, leaving Near to his own business. After a quick glance over the place I would been spending my next years of sleeping in, it didn't take me long to place out my stuff.

The room itself was pretty uninteresting - two beds, a wardrobe, a desk and a window - but the thing that caugh my attention was the stuff belonging to th person that seemed to be my roomate.

His things had occupied the bed under the window, laying all around it. Striped shirts, jeans - basic stuff. One thing I noticed was the lime Gameboy laying on the sheets, and the box of games next to it. Holy shit, did this kid like games? There had to be like thirty in there!

Turning away from the messy part of the room, I opened my bag to get my few belongings out.

Not that I had too many of them. Some clothes, - all black, of course - my chocolate and a bible. Now, about that bible. It wasn't really mine, but I loved it.

After all, it had belonged to my mother. She was catholic and very strict about that; though she did not force her beliefs onto myself, she allways went to church and prayed and all of that stuff. And as the bible was the only thing I had left from her, it was very dear to me.

I put it inside of my pillow. That way, it would most likely be untouched by others.

Then what?

I had absolutely nothing to do, but I was dead tired. It had taken a while to get to Winchester - the Netherlands is far away. (Yes, I'm from the Netherlands. God, you'd think the name 'Keehl' would say it all. And I bet you didn't expect me to speak English. Ever heard of school?)

So I decided to take a nap, at least until my roomate had quit his classes. Though I would have preferred to be awake when he arrived, I really was dead tired. So I lay on the bed, curled myself up on the sheets and fell asleep.

Without any nightmares. Way to go.

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**AN: Eh... Really, really short. I know. But please don't hate me, I do my best. Besides, this chapter is kinda lame.**  
**And yeah, I made Mello and Near cousins, just for the fun of it. I allways pictured them as relatives, and this is my story so I decide. Maw.**  
**Matt will appear in the next chapter, obviously, and his GameBoy as well. I love that GameBoy...**

**Anyway. Please review if you like it, to show you like it. If you don't like it, review and tell me what could be better. I don't have a Beta so it probably sucks right now. Yeah...**


	2. Making Friends

_DISCLAIMER!_

_Realized I didn't put this in chap. 1, so here we go. I'm gonna make this perfectly clear and then not post it again, ok?_

I** DO NOT OWN DEATH NOTE. I WILL NEVER OWN DEATH NOTE.**

**I DO NOT OWN THE CHARACHTERS, EXEPT KATI.**

**I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING YOU REGOGNIZE.**

**I OWN THIS PLOTLINE, BUT THAT'S ABOUT IT.**

Glad we settled that.

* * *

**AN: Yay, new chapter! I thinktihs is going to be the longest story I've ever written and finished, actually. I'm not sure how long it will end up, though. I'm just gonna go with it. :)**

**So... Matt shows up this chapter. Wiie! :D I love Matt. And Mello. And Kati, though you don't know who that is yet. Haha.**

**Warnings: Nothing special, some swearing, but that's about it.**

**ENJOY :D**

* * *

I woke up because someone was poking me.

Yeah, you got me right. Poking.

And since I hate waking up, the poker got a very hard pillow thrown at them. I swear, these things are like rocks! (Oh yeah, not the pillow with the Bible. We got two pillows each.)

Of course, the pillow got thrown back at me and I finally opened my eyes to send a death glare to whoever it was. And met a pair of goggles two inches from my eyes.

I jerked back and hit my head in the wall, while Mr. Goggles pulled away. I stared at him with a face I hoped looked furious, and I pretty much pulled it off since the guy got a bit pink in the face. Ha.

"Sorry. I didn't mean for you to hit the wall." He said apologeticly. "I'm Matt, your roomate."

"I'm Mello." I replied coldly, ignoring the hand he had reached out. "And my head hurts."

He snorted laughingly and I sent out another death glare. Man, I think I set a record that day...

"Again" He said, "I'm sorry. Welcome to Wammy's."

I rolled my eyes. "Nice welcome there. 'Hi, new kid, let's bang your head in the wall.' Sounds like a great place to live." My tone was rather ironical, but he didn't seem to take offense. Damn. Instead, he chuckled lightly.

"Well, unless you feel like your head'll split in half, I suggest we drop the subject." I raised one eyebrow. "This, as you know, is Wammy's. Now, the short way, do you want a tour or stay in the room?"

"Eh... I dunno, is there anything worth seeing?"

He shrugged (still grinning, of course. I would learn soon that he likes grinning). "Depends what you define as 'worth seeing'. The mansion itself isn't all that interesting, but the people here are. Some, at least."

"Are you one of them?"

I think he blinked, but it was hard to tell behind those fucking goggles. Shit, I hope he takes them off sometimes.

"Interesting or un-interesting?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, I'm dying to hear about un-interesting people. What do you think, smartie?"

"You do know that's candy, right?"

"What?"

"Smarties. Candy. Chocolate stuff." Oh. That reminded me. I hadn't eaten chocolate in... I looked at the clock. 15:12. I hadn't eaten chocolate in about three hours. I realized I needed chocolate. Bad.

Without answering his question, I got up from the bed and stalked over to the drawer where my beloved candy was waiting for me. In one motion I opened it, got out a bar, closed the drawer while unfolding the wrapper and took a bite.

Who said a guy can't do several things at the same time, huh?

Matt was now watching me as I molested the chocolate bar. The second I realized it, though, I turned my attention towards him (With the chocolate still haning from my mouth. I bet I looked really stupid right then...).

He laughed. The fuck-nut actually laughed at me.

"Seems like you'll fit in excellent." I had no idea what he was talking about, and it probably showed. "Well, every kid here seems to have som kind of... Addiction. But not normal addictions, like alcohol and drugs and stuff like that." I still sucked at my chocolate while looking at him; this was rather interesting. "Seems like we all do strange stuff. A girl here draws, at evertything, if she don't she can't focus. One guy allways listen to wierd music, while another one plays with coins. We all do stuff that's out of the ordinary, or overdo them to the extreme, or else we have a hard time getting things done. I call it addiction." He suddenly seemed to notice the way I stared at him. "Did you understand that? I suck at explaining."

"What's your 'addiction'?" My chocolate bar was finished and I opened up another one.

"Gaming." I raised an eyebrow and he shrugged. "What can I say, I don't go anywhere without my gameboy." He nodded towards the lime-green thing I had noticed when I arrived.

"Well, as long as you don't have the sound on when I'm trying to sleep, that's fine with me."

He smiled. "I like you."

I snorted. "Well, you bond too quickly."

Matt laughed. "Somehow, I doubt that. I've been here for two years and I have one friend."

"How old are you?" Okey, the question was somehow out of place.

"Ten."

I stared at him. That did not make sense in my mind. Seriously, ten? Wierd. I guess this is what people feel when they find out I'm eleven.

His soft chuckle brought me back.

"Yeah, I know. I'm way to mature for my age." He rolled his eyes. "What about you? What's your age?"

"Eleven." I said, snapping another piece of chocolate.

His turn to stare at me. I shrugged.

"Seems we're both out of age, then. Guess that's just normal for orphans." The second I said that I realized how stupid it was. Shit. Would he take offense?

Turns out not,

Instead, he laughed again.

"Yeah, like we're pre-mature. Hey, we could do a slogan about that!" His eyes lit up and he continued in a deep voice, illustrating with his hands. "'Tired of being dismissed by girls for being immature? Put your parents in a car accident and BAM! You gain three years of emotional matureness over a night!' Bulletproof."

I was actually laughing so hard I dropped my chocolate. He joined in and we laughed until it wasn't even funny anymore. Somehow we just couldn't stop, and after a few minutes we were gasping for air.

"My stomach hurts." Matt squealed, followed by a new laugh-attack.

"Can't... Breathe..." I panted, finally being able to control myself.

Right then, someone knocked at the door.

"Uh, is something dying in there, or what?"

The comment immediatley brought on more painful laughter and the door opened, the knocker letting itself in.

This time I recovered rather quickly and looked up at the girl leaning against the wall. She had closed the door behind her and was now looking at us with an amused smile on her face.

"Hi." Matt softened a giggle and looked at me. "Mello, this is Kati. Kati, this is my new roomate."

She smiled at me and stretched out a hand. I shook it and then looked at Matt. "Please don't tell me I have to get my headache back now. Last time hurt."

Again, uncontrolled laughter. Kati seemed to find this amusing, though she obviously didn't see the cause for it.

When we had calmed down, and made sure no more of this was coming, I sat up and got a better look at Kati.

She seemed fairly tall - even though she was now sitting down on my bed - not tall as in fully grown, but tall for her age. Wich I estimated to be around mine, maybe a year older. She had blonde hair tucked in a ponytail, a round face and green eyes that sparkled when she smiled. (I'm not in love with her, that's just something I noticed.) Also, she was dressed in all black. Black jeans, black T-shirt, black hoodie. I kinda liked it.

By the way, did I describe Matt? Guess not. Sorry.

He had red hair - that seemed to be natural, actually - and because of the goggles I had no idea what his eyes looked like. He was a few inches shorter than me, and wearing jeans and a black-and-white striped shirt. No surprise there.

Since I'm not too much for describing people, that's all you're gonna get. Ha.

Anyway. Back to the story.

Kati still had her eyebrows lifted when she looked at us.

"So? Are you going to describe the funny thing, or is it just too wierd for me to get?"

Matt chuckled. "It's wierd. It's not even funny." I didn't agree, but I was too busy looking for the chocolate I'd dropped to say something about it. After I found it, I viciously bit into it. Yum.

Kati looked at me again.

"So, Mello. How old are you?"

"Eleven. You?"

She didn't seem surprised at all. Huh. "Twelve. So, I guess we're three in a row, then."

Matt giggled. I looked at him. He was still a bit flushed, well, either that or he was blushing for some reason. Most likely flushed. I mean, come on. That laugh got painful after a while.

"Where are you from?" Her vioce snapped me back and I looked at Kati, a bit surprised.

"How did you know I'm not english?"

Se shrugged. "You have a light accent. It's not so strong that I can tell where it's from, but not so small I would'nt notice."

Okey... wierd. "Netherlands." Her face lit up.

"So you speak Dutch? Awesome!"

Matt rolled his eyes.

"Sure, just add him to the collection." He gave her a look and she snorted.

I was totally confused. "Wait, what?"

Matt rolled his eyes again. "Kati has got this thing for collecting languages."

"Basically" she interrupted him, "I want to know people that speak as many different languages as possible. I haven't met Dutch before, so it's great to know you, Mello."

"Nice to please you" I answered. "Just don't put me in a jar, and I'll be fine."

"Can't make any promises." Her eyes glittered again.

"So, what languages do you have so far?"

"English, German, American, Spanish, French, Swedish and now Dutch."

I raised my eyebrows. "Swedish?"

She snorted.

"How did I know you would comment that? Yeah, I'm from Sweden. Yay."

I nodded. "Cool. So, like, you've seen wild polar bears?" She stared at me. "Well, don't they like walk the streets up there?"

This brought out an insane laugh from both Kati and Matt, wich I didn't understand whatsoever. After a couple of minutes, Kati had recovered enough to talk.

"There's no fucking polar bears in Sweden! Why does everybody keep asking me that?"

Now it was my turn to stare at her.

"Well what do you think? Along with vikings, that's about everything you guys are known for!"

She laughed again. "Vikings and polar bears? Great, you guys really have high thoughts about Sweden."

Matt snorted. "Come on, stop being so bipolar." She glared at him. "Two hours ago, you called it 'the worst piece-of-shit country ever' and now you get insulted when we say it's the laughingstock of europe?"

She rolled her eyes.

"Well, duh, it's okay that I complain about it, Matty, but not someone else."

I shook my head and laughed.

"You're like a married couple, you know that?"

The look of absolute wrage that comment earned me from both of them was actually kind of scary.

"Uh... Did I do something?"

"Don't... Ever... Say that again, ok?" Kati ordered. I swear, her voice was really freaky.

"Sure. Jesus, hot spot much?"

At that she actually threw herself at me. I'm not kidding, she literally jumped off my bed and landed on me.

It kinda hurt, actually.

But then I soon forgot as she started to tickle me. And I promise, that girl knows how to tickle someone.

After Matt joined in to hold my arms out of the way it didn't take me long to, between my screaming laughs, beg them to stop. I'm ticklish, okey?

Of course, they didn't stop.

Or well, Matt did, but Kati kept tickling me. It wasn't until I declared that I couldn't breathe that she pulled back, leaving me gasping for air on the floor. Stupid bitch. I swear, my oxygen circulation was on hold for a minute.

When I had pulled myself together, and they had explained that everybody allways referrs to them as 'the married couple', I understood what had made Kati pissed off. But I still wanted my revenge.

"By the way" I said, "Where is your room? 'Cause if you heard us laughing before, the walls are either thin or you live nearby."

"I have the room on the other side of the wall." She answered, clearly not suspecting anything. "And I have it on my own, unlike you guys. Haha."

_Well, let's se who'll be laughing tomorow,_ I thought evilly.

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**AN: I just love that last comment. It's a great way to introduce a new chapter, don't you think? :)**

**I realized that Matt's GameBoy isn't all that active, but can you blame me? I was too busy writing Mello OOC.**  
**(The reason that he is OOC is that he's still 'young and innocent', and hasn't quite picked up the 'bad boy' style yet.)**

**Two things: Kati's first comment is very much like her, though she got a bit OOC after that.**  
**Also, her name isn't pronounced like 'Katie', mote like 'Káti'. Just so you know. (Oh, and she's Swedish, like me. I don't actually know if the whole Europe see us like that, but I've met people that seriously belives we have polar bears walking the streets. Note: We don't.)**

**Please review and make me happy! :D**


	3. Sweet Revenge

**AN: New chapter. Wie! Err, nothing much to say about this, though it is a bit slow in the beginning. Bear with me.**

**Warnings: Cursing. Nothing new there.**

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Kati left our room a couple of minutes later to do some of her homework. Turns out, she doesn't have the same schedule as Matt and I. Well, we don't have the same schedule either, but almost.

The second she closed the door I turned to face him.

"I need your help." He looked a bit off.

"Eh... With what?" I rolled my eyes.

"To get back at Kati." He still looked confused. "Well, she did tickle me for way too long, and I'm kinda pissed."

He snorted at me. My eyes narrowed, and he reached out for his GameBoy.

"Well, that depends" he said, turning the thing on, "What you want me to do."

"I dunno." I shrugged. He seemed surprisingly focused for someone playing a videogame. "Go into her room and do something. You're the one that knows her, what do you think is a good payback?"

He chuckled. "Well, more like 'what kind of payback doesn't get us killed'." He frowned slightly. "I'm not really sure that's doable, though. We can't touch any of her stuff - surely, you understand that - besides, whatever we do can't be too bad. I mean, tickling's not that much of a crime."

I raised an eyebrow.

"So there's nothing to do?"

Mat shrugged lightly, still playing on his GameBoy. How the fuck can he be so focused on our conversation while doing that?

"I dunno, we could paint on her face or something. Wait, no, bad idea. Scrap that." He frowned again, sitting down on his bed. "It's kind of hard to come up with something that's payback worthy of the 'crime'" I rolled my eyes, "But doesn't get her so pissed we end up in trouble. Kati is really protective over her stuff."

I sat down on my own bed, putting my head in my hands and resting my elbows on my knees. Suckily, I was almost out of chocolate. Fuck. I needed to get some more soon.

I wrapped open my last bar and viciously snapped a piece of it, furrowing my eyebrows in focus. But no matter how much I thought about it, nothing good popped into my head and I sighed in frustration.

Then someone knocked on the door. After Matt opened, Kati stuck her head in the room and looked at us.

"Hey, dinner time. Just thought you nerds would like to know." She winked at Matt, who rolled his eyes.

She left and we followed her down to the huge dining hall that seemed to take up the whole building by itself. Man, I'm still not used to the _size_ of this place!

Though it looked classy, with long tables and wodden stools, the system was built up pretty much like school. You go in a line, get a plate, stack food on it, get water or milk etc.

But the food was way better than any school I've ever been to (and I've been to a lot). Oven-baked chicken with rice and vegetables. Another thing I wasn't used to; I hadn't eaten chicken a lot before.

I didn't really care what kind of food it was, really, I was starving and it smelled great.

Me, Matt and Kati sat together, and they had some lame conversation about something (I was too busy eating to pay any attention) when this small girl sits down next to Kati, who immediatley looked like she wanted to leave.

The girl looked about seven, and she stared ad me with big, blue eyes behind glasses. Then she smiled.

"Hello, I'm Hannah." I was going to reply, really, but she interrupted me. "You're new here, aren't you? I should know, I never forget a face. Are you friends with Matt and Katie? Awesome! I don't really know Matt, to be honest, but Katie is my best friend. I hope we can be friends too, 'cause I love friends, don't you? Friends are awesome. We could make a friend fanclub!"

I blinked. I swear to God, that took her about three seconds to say. And she said it loud. The mask of suffering plastered onto Kati's face told me this girl really was annoying.

And judging by all of that 'me and Katie (Katie? Fuck, she couldn't even get her name right!) are BFF's' talk, she probably was some wierd definition of a stalker.

Kati stood up.

"Uh, Hannah, I'm sorry but I have some homework." She said quicly, got her plate and left.

Hannah didn't seeme to care at all, instead turned to me.

"By the way, are you a boy ore a girl? I mean, you look like a boy but you have kind of a girly haicut. No offense at all, you look good in it, but it's kind of hard to tell. I once had a friend..." I looked at Matt with horror plastered all over my face.

_Please, _the look said, _get her to stop talking!_

Matt, on the other hand, looked like he just got a brilliant idea.

"Hannah" He said, leaning a bit over the table to her, "Would you dome a favour?"

"A favour?" she looked at him.

"Well, you can think of it like a game." He smiled and I realized what he was thinking. A grin slowly spead over my face.

"And there's a reward too." I added, looking at her.

The freak (new nickname) looked estatic, and when we told her the 'plan', she seemed thrilled.

As we made our way back to our room, we made a silent high-five. Revenge was on the way. And it was sweet.

I woke up by Matt poking me - seen that before?

"Seriously" I growled, "Why do you allways poke me when I'm sleeping?"

"Shaking doesn't work. Now, get up. We have a revenge plan to enjoy."

My eyes flew open. I had totally forgotten about that, but now I was up and ready to go. Or, well, I had to get dressed, but then I was ready to go.

We quickly pulled on some clothes - me all black, Matt had jeans and stripes (he fucking loved those stripes) - and quietly got out of our room, hiding behind a corner, to await the first part of the plan.

At exactly 7Am Hannah showed up, and she smiled at us before knocking on Kati's door.

Since it was a Saturday, Matt had explained Kati's usual time of waking up would be around 11Am; he knew most of her daily habits.

Anyway. Hannah knocked on the door. At first, no response. Then she knocked harder. The third time she banged on the door, and we finally got some results.

"What the fuck do you want?" a very sleep-drugged Kati called from inside the room.

"Come on, Katie, wake up!" Hanna said enthuisiasticly, "You'll miss the best part of the day! Come on, we have tons of stuff to do!"

The door violently got ripped open and Matt and I hid behind the wall to make sure we weren't seen.

"Hannah? The fuck?" Kati's voice said. "Leave me alone, I want to sleep."

I could almost hear the freak tugging on her arm, and I laughed on the inside. After about fifteen minutes of nagging, Hannah eventually got Kati to get dreesed and come out.

We followed them at a distance, hiding behind corners and walking quietly. Kati still seemed half asleep, though, so it was probably uneccesary, but still. It was fun.

Hannah dragged her outside to 'watch the sunrise hit the trees'. Man, that girl did a good job; after about thirty minutes, her voice got really annoying. Apparently, Kati thought so too.

We almost felt sorry for her, in between our laugh hysterics, but we couldn't call it off now. It was way too much fun.

And it went on for a couple of hours; at breakfast, Hannah sat beside her and Kati didn't eat a thing; the time before lunch the freak made her draw crayon paintings, explaining everything she drew with way too many details. Some girl named Linda joined them - she was the girl that loved drawing - and I could almost feel Kati's wordless pleads to get her out of there, though Linda didn't even seem to notice. Either that, or she found it as entertaining as we did.

By lunchtime, Kati looked like she was gonna have a nervous breakdown. By now, she had tried everything from braibing to threathening to get Hanna to leave her alone, but none of it worked. Not only because of the 'reward' we had promised the freak, but she seemed to find it entertaining too.

Me and Matt sat down next to the duo with our plates and enjoyed the show. Eventually, Hannah got up to get some more milk, leaving Kati alone for the first time that day. She immediatly flew herself over the table and clinged onto Matt. Seriously, I thought she was going to cry.

"Please, get her off me!" she wailed, "Please! I swear, that girl's gonna drive me fucking insane!" Now, she let go of Matt and laid her head on the table. "She just keeps on talking! Why won't she ever shut up? Why?"

She turned her head to look at us, and I had some serious trouble with holding back my laughter. Hannah returned to the table and Kati started hyperventilating. I looked at Matt as the freak started talking about wether Snow White or The Little Mermaid were prettiest, and with a silent look we decided it was enough. I mean, as funny as it was, we didn't want to inflict too much trauma upon her.

"Hannnah" I interrupted her, "I think that's enough. Thank you."

She smiled widly at us. "Did I do good? I think today was really fun!"

"Yeas, you did great," Matt quickly said, before she could talk any more, "But I think we'll stop it now. Wich means, you'll be getting your award."

She squealed and I opened a pocket in my pants to pull up two bars of hidh-quality dark chocolate. (Me and Matt sneaked into the kitchen the night before to get the stuff. We really became best friends over a night. Huh.)

She took them with a smile and jumped away with her empty plate. It was first now that I turned my gaze to Kati. She was staring at us.

"What... The fuck... Was that?" She sounded really infuriated and I shrugged with a grin.

"Well, she had done a favour for us and we wanted to pay her back. We had a deal, y'now."

"Did you two plan this?" Okay, now it was getting a bit scary. Kati seriously looked like she was giong to punch us.

"Well, actually it was me, not Matt. He just kinda went with it."

"YOU FUCKING BASTARD!"

I was prepared at this though, so when she got up I bolted to the door. This lead to a long chase through the corridors where Kati threathened to kill me in a lot of ways.

Eventually she caught up with me. So what? I'm not used to running like hell for thirty minutes! That I could go on for so long is actually impressing, so shut up.

Kati pushed me up against a wall, still panting. Her eyes were furious and I really was expecting her to punch me.

"Why.. The fuck did you do that?" She hissed at me.

"Payback." I panted back.

She looked a bit confused, and I continued. "For tickling me yester day? That was not okay!"

"You mean.. I went through hell today for tickling you?"

Okay, so now I was almost scared. Almost.

"Well, for me it's the same thing. You didn't stop when I told you too."

"That's so childish!" She let go of me and I got prepared to run again. "You are like a three-year-old. Okay, how about this. I'm not gonna kill you, but you owe me. Big time."

I nodded. Right now, death didn't seem all that appealing.

"Wich means that I have a favour I can cash in from here to eternity. Ok?"

I nodded again, and she smiled. "Oh, and if you ever do anything like that again, I'm going to give you a new face. Just so you know."

"Sounds good to me. And then I'll make Hannah stick to you forever."

She laughed. Also, Matt showed up. He came running towards us with a bewildered look on his face.

"Hey..."

He couldn't continue. I don't know how fast the kid runned, but he was actually fucking unable to speak.

"What, Matt?" Kati asked. She frowned a bit while looking at him as he was working to get the words out.

"Roger.. Is looking for you. He... He is kinda pissed." Matt eventually spit out.

I was totally confused, but Kati looked freaked out.

"Who the fuck is Roger?"

She turned at me, grabbing my arm.

"We have to get out. I have a hiding place, I'll explain there." She dragged me with her as she started running towards the front door. "Thank you Matt!" she called out behind us.

Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting inside a tree in the garden. Kati had showed me how to get up; at first I was suspicious, but once up I realized there was almost like a room inside the crown of the tree. We sat there for a while, panting, before I turned to her.

"Now. Seriously, who the fuck is Roger?"

* * *

**AN: So... Roger is up the next chapter!**

**Ok, and about Hannah. Mello isn't the type to describe people, but Hannah is a readhead with freckles, blue eyes, glasses and big front-teeth. She's kind of cute in my head, and she loves pink (read: allways wearing). That's pretty much all you need to know about her... Oh, and her 'addiction' is her nails. Not so much in this chapter, but she's allways picking on them.**

**Yuukarii: Thank you for reviewing! I'm happy. Och ja, människor från Europa tror det... Förmodligen inte alla, men många jag träffat gör det. Tro det eller ej xP**

**Er, anything else... I don't think so. Well, exept that I love you if you review, but that's about it! See y****ou next time,**** then, hopefully :D**


	4. Hidingplace

**AN: New chapter! :D**

**Seems like I'm really heading for the 'one chapter a day' thing, yay!**

**Warnings: Nothing new. Swearing, but that'ts it. I'm gonna stop writing warnings until something new happends, ok?**

* * *

"Now. Who the fuck is Roger?"

Kati sighed and leaned her head back on the branches. By the way, did I mention the size of the 'room'?

It's not very big. In fact, me and Kati were pressed up to eachother; my left arm and shoulder were line by line with hers, and she practically sat in my lap.

Though that would usually be somewhat awkward, she didn't seeme to care and neither did I. We both knew we had no coice but to stick it out, and though I had been blushing somewhat at first, there seemed to be no tension whatsoever, and I was fine with it.

We were just two friends sitting extremely close, and that was it. Anyway...

Kati sighed and then looked at the leaves in front of her.

"Roger is the person in charge here."

I scowled. "Isn't Wammy the one in charge?"

"Well, technically Roger is. Wammy owns the place, but he's never here and thus Roger is... Principal, or whatever the fuck you're supposed to call it, when Wammy's away." Huh. Seemed simple enough.

"But who is Roger? Why are you afraid of him?" I had this picture of a big, evil-looking man who smashed the student's faces into walls ur hung them up in the ceilings by their thumbs.

"Well" she looked at me, "It's not that we're afraid of him, more like we don't want him to punish us. He enjoys that a lot."

I felt pale. "Does he hang you int the ceiling by your thumbs?"

At this, Kati broke out in a laugh hysterics. I got kind of annoyed; this was my actual worries!

"Well, I guess you really are eleven."Her eyes glittered again and I blushed. Shit. "Don't worry, not even Roger would do something like that. His punishments are more like five tons of homework, taking away your stuff and shit like that."

I nodded. I did not like this Roger person, and I quickly decided to keep out of his way. By that, I don't mean I wouldn't break the rules, just that I'd make sure not to get caught.

Then something popped into my head.

"'How long are we going to stay here?"

She shrugged. "Until Matt come. We usually do that; if one of us gets into trouble, that person hides, and the other one sticks around until Roger has calmed down. Then that person goes to get the one that's hiding. We have some places, but this is the only one big enough for two."

I nodded. This got me curious of a lot of things, but one question was obvious.

"You two do a lot of mischief, then?"

She snorted with laughter. I guess that in a way, that was funny. Huh. I smiled at her and she returned the favour.

"Yeah, we do. It's what we're known for."

"Do you get caught?"

"Sometimes, but not nearly allways." She chuckled. "When we do, though, punishments are bad. Really bad. So that's what the hiding system is for."

"What's the longest any of you have remained hidden?"

Kati paused. She pinched the bridge of her nose in deep focus. I realized that her and Matt really did _a lot _of mischief.

"Well, let's see... The longest I've stayed was for about six hours. Right here, in late October." She smiled somewhat at the memory. "I was half dead when Matt finally was able to get me back to my room, and it took me hours to warm up."

I scowled again.

"But why this place, then?"

"It was the only one available." She shrugged. "And Roger was really pissed that time. I don't remember what I did, it was like a year ago, but Matt's been through worse." I raised my eyebrows. "He had to sleep in a broom cupboard."

My jaw dropped. Holy shit, that's bad. Kati raised her own eyebrows silghtly, and I didn't even have to ask the question.

"He hacked into the database and posted photoshopped pron-pictures with Roger's face all over it." I laughed. "It was a bet, and got fixed really quickly, but he still got really pissed off. Of course, the only computer hacker here is Matt, so Roger immediately started to hunt him down. I think he stayed in that broom cupboard for twenty-six hours or something like that. Couldn't walk when I managed to get him out. We laid low a while after that."

I nodded. I was still kind of surprised Matt had done something like that; my impression of him definetly didn't include posting porn on the school's database. I had excpected that from Kati, but not Matt. Wether it made me like him more or not I wasn't sure. But it sure as hell was cool. I hadn't even considered he was a computer hacker. Now, that made me really impressed.

Also, being able to sleep in a broom cupboard was an admirable feature. Seemed like both Kati and Matt stuck things out if they had too.

"So" I said, "How long do you think Roger'll be pissed?"

She shrugged. "Not that long. We've been here for about thirty minutes, so Matt would probably show up soon unless anything else happened."

Right then - and this is actually true! - a voice called from under the tree.

"Hey, guys? You there?" It was Matt.

The timing of his appearance was a bit wierd, but stuff like that happends, right? Anyway, we got down from te tree and carefully sneaked back to me and Matt's room.

I sat on Matt's bed, he was on the floor leaning towards it and Kati sat in the window frame. Turns out, nothing happened after me and Kati got away; Roger searched for a while but quickly gave up. We celebrated my first rule-break - turns out, yelling and running in school halls is forbidden - by sneaking into the kitcen and stealing three bags of crisps and a two-litre bottle of Coke. Also, I took the opportunity to really stack up my chocolate supply.

We got the stuff bach to our room, where we opened a bag of crisps and the coke. It didn't take long for Matt and Kati to get in a competition of swigging the stuff; Matt won, but he then complained the coke were in his nose and that it hurt. Me and Kati laughed and he threw a pillow at us.

That, of course, escalated to a pillowfight between the three of us. I don't think anyone won that, as we just ended up in a big, laughing pile on the floor. I don't think I've ever had as much fun as we did that night; I even forgot that my parents had died. It was just me, Matt and Kati, and the new friendship we shared.

It was acually a bit wierd; I mean, I had known them for a little more than twenty-four hours, but it felt like a lifetime to me.

Anyway, I'm gonna stop being sappy about our friendship and move on with th story.

As we laughed at he floor, I suddenly realised something.

"Kati" I said, propping myself on an elbow and looking down on her - she was laying across me and Matt - "I just came to think of the fact that I haven't seen your room yet."

She raised an eyebow. "Sorry, but random much?"

Matt chuckled. "Aw, come on, Katey." He looked at her, "Just show Mello your room. It's not like he's gonna brake something."

She rolled her eyes and stood up.

"I don't think he'd brake anything, it was just a tad bit random."

She left the room and I followed her. I don't know how I came to think of it, but I didn't care. In a way, I was kind of thrilled to see her room. I knew she was living alone, but that was about it.

"Just so you know" Kati interrupted my thoughts, "I don't like cleaning. So be prepared."

I rolled my eyes and she opened the door.

It was dark, and I couldn't see a thing until she pulled away the curtains. they were big, black and obliterated any outer light when closed. The room itself was as I had expected it to be. Messy.

Clothes were scarreted all around the place - on the floor, in the bed, on the desk - and it was all black. No real surprise there. I saw some stripes and a bit of purple, but mostly black. The bed was also messy, and I didn't know wether it allways was like that or just because of her unusual wake-up that morning. _Jesus, that happened this morning? Seems like a lifetime._

The thing that surprised me was the instruments.

I hadn't thought a bit of what Kati's 'addiction' would be, but I would never think it was music. She had three guitars, a violin, an electric bass, and I think that a harmonica was laying on the desk. But the thing that was really wierd was the piano.

I'm not kidding, she had gotten a bic, black fucking _piano_ in there. I raised my eyebrows. I mean, it wasn't a concert piano, but it was still kind of huge.

Kati met my gaze as I looked at her.

"Do you know how to play them?"

She nodded with a small smile. I grinned. "Wicked."

She chuckled lightly, along with Matt whom I first now realised stood behind me in the door opening.

"What can I say? I like my music." She shrugged, still smiling. "Though it did take some time to convince Roger to get the piano in here."

I laughed. I didn't know what Roger looked like, but I could still imagine Kati nagging about it.

"Well, I see why we're never in here." I said, "You'd kill me if I broke something, right?"

"You'd definitley die, yes." Her eyes glittered again and gave a somewhat freaky look alltogether. If I didn't know she was kidding, I'd probalby be scared. What? I was a wimp back then, okey?

Eventually, we got back to me and Matt's room, where we continued our 'party'. About three hours later - about 2AM - we had pulled Kati's mattress in between me and Matt's beds. Technically, girls and boys weren't allowed to sleep in the same room, but we all knew why that rule existed. And it was sure as fuck neither me or Matt would even consider shagging with Kati. Not that she was unattractive, but we just weren't interested in her that way. (We were not interested in any girl that way, either. Come on, he was ten and I eleven.)

We talked about different kind of stuff, but ended up in a discussion about things to do to Roger. None of us liked him ,and it was his fault. Not that I'd met him, but still. I was a rulebreaker by nature, and that meaned it was practically in my DNA to dislike him.

Kati suggested Matt to hack the safetycameras and see if he did anything interesting, but both me and Matt doubted that.

"Hey" he said, eyes lighting up, "Let's put toothpaste in his shoes!"

This got me and Kati to roar with laughter, and she clutched her stomach in pain.

"More like glue in his slippers. That's be fun to explain to the teachers." I said, getting us into more laughter.

Kati seemed to be in seroius pain now, and she squealed between giggles.

"Can't... Breathe... My stomac... hurts..." She gasped, putting all three of us into more hysterics.

When the laughter had ended, I suddenly felt like I was going to fall asleep in a second.

"Hey guys..." Kati's voice came from the floor, "I'm kind of tired. Is it okay with you to sleep now?"

Mat and I mumbled something agreeing in response, and soon all three of us had passed out into dreamland.

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**AN: Yay for laughter!**

**This was fun to write. Especially the end, when they have the 'party'. I just love it, but that's about all I have to say for now.**

**See you soon, then, I hope.**

**Also, if you like or don't like, feel free to review and make me jump with joy :D**


	5. School's Up

**AN: I HAVE INTERNET!**  
**Oh my fucking god, I'm so sorry that I haven't updated! Turns out, my whole router crashed and we had to replace it. But fucking finally it's working, so now comes chapter 5! Oh, well... I guess it's chap 6, but whatever.**

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The next day was pretty un-interesting.

We woke up, got Kati's stuff back into her room and then we did nothing. And by nothing, I mean Matt was busy with his GameBoy, Kati played on one of her guitars - she was kind of awesome, and the sound was relaxing - and I sucked on a chocolate bar, thinking about stuff. Like how my parents died, that I had school tomorrow, and how wierd the colour of the carpet was. Stuff like that.

So when I threw a look at Matt's digital clock it showed 2PM, I realised we hadn't eaten anything since last night (well, I had my chocolate, but you get what I mean) and that I was starving.

"Hey" I said, causing the other two to jump a little at the sound, "What do you say about getting something to eat?"

Kati put her guitar down and the sudden silence that came upon the room made me realise exactly how realixing the guitar play had been.

"Sure." She said. Matt turned his head down to the game without answering. She poked him. (What was up with these guys and poking? Seriously, it's like they got some wierd poke fetisch or something...)

"I'm not hungry." He mumbled and she rolled her eyes.

"Come on, you know better than to try that one with me. You have to eat, and you'll eat now."

She tugged at his shirt. Matt pushed her hand away. "Seriously, I'm not hungry."

Kati's eyes narrowed. She quickly stretched her arm over Matt's head and snatched the GameBoy out of his playing hands. He yelled at her, but she just saved and turned the thing off.

"Oh, shut up." she said, "You know fucking well you need to eat. Holy shit Matt, you're gonna kill yourself one day if you don't learn how to control that."

Matt scowled. "Come on, it's not that bad. Stop exaggerating."

"I'm not exaggerating!"

"Er, guys?" I interrupted them. "What the fuck are you arguing about?" Don't think I'm stupid, but I really hadn't known these guys for that long.

"Oh, sorry Mello." Kati said, "We're arguing about the fact that Matt sometimes is too busy playing his fucking games to think of eating. And I'm worried." Matt rolled his eyes.

"That's because you're exaggerating! Now give me my game back!"

"I'm not exaggerating!" she yelled at him.

Then, of course, came a big fat argument between the two of them.

"Oh, for fucks sake!" I broke in. "Just stop fighting, you're giving me a headache. Matt, go down and eat lunch. Kati, stop over-reacting."

"I'm not over-reacting!"

I rolled my eyes. "But you're turning it into a big thing. I mean, sure, not eating is bad," I glared at Matt, "But nothing's gonna get better if you two yell away my time, ok?"

Kati frowned. "Your time? Oh, whatever. Matt, just have lunch."

He just watched us behing his goggles. Then he sighed. "Sure, I'll eat. Happy now?"

Then he pushed himself past us and got out of the room. As we followed him, Kati smiled at me.

"Thanks, Mello. It's usually a lot harder to get him to surrender." I smiled back.

"Don't worry. If there's two of us, he's gonna give up soon. Besides, he knows himself that he's got to eat. He'll get out of it." She didn't look convinced and I sighed. "At one point in my life, I lived on chocolate. I'm not kidding; it was literally the one thing I ate." I shrugged. "But now, I'm all well and dandy."

She stared at me. I understood what she was thinking; How the fuck can someone live sorely on chocolate? _By going through some bad shit_, the look I sent back said. She nodded slightly, and we didn't say another word until we sat next to Matt in the dining hall. Since it was a Sunday, lunch were served until 3PM.

Matt continued to be in kind of a pissy mood the rest of the afternoon - Kati decided not to give him back his GameBoy - but we didn't care. After all, he had been throwing himself at that food like me on a bar of chocolate. Since it was so obvious he was starving, we were happy with the decision to drag him along,

After lunch, since the weather was so nice - sunny, but a bit cloudy - me and Kati forced him to go outside. That was another habit he didn't take on so well; just being outside was more than he were used to.

We couldn't come up with anything good to do, so we ended up sitting beneath a tree watching the other kids play.

Matt had refused to talk to us at all, and it was frustrating, so Kati decided to run up to her room and get one of her guitars. While she was gone, I tried to talk to the Jerk. (New nickname.)

"Hey" I said, leaning forward in an attempt of making eyecontact. Damn those goggles! "You can't keep ignoring us forever, you know."

He snorted; I sighed. "Eventually Kati's gonna get pissed and beat you up. Better get yourself prepared; she doesn't seem to be the gentle type." (That I recalled from her death threaths the day before.)

He chuckled. "Trust me, she isn't."

Those were the first words I'd heard from hime since he stormed out of our room. I was proud of myself.

"Why so, or more importantly, how do you know?"

He turned to look at me. "Well, this might seem a bit odd, but when she first got here she was beating up practically anything that bothered her." I raised my eyebrows in surprise, "She was like a living butcherknife."

My expression probably said it all and he laughed.

"It took me a while to befriend her; though, after Roger threathened to kick her out, she got a bit nicer. But it was still kind of hard."

"But why?" Ugh. Stupid question. I knew why, we all knew why. At Wammy's, stuff like this was obvious. No reason to ask why, and I knew it as soon as the question left my mouth.

"Well," he shrugged, "It comes from her life before she got here. Trust me, that girl hasn't had it easy." Our eyes met and I silently asked him for more information. He chuckled again.

"Sorry, but I can't tell you stuff like that." He lent back on the tree, "Kati's the one that'll have to tell you. After all, if you told me your story, would you like me to tell others about it?"

He still held my eyes and I suddenly felt an urge to pull those fucking goggles off his face. I shook my head in response to his question. _My story_. I had never thought of it that way; that it was a story others would have interest in hearing. Also, I couldn't help to wonder.

"What's your story, Matt?"

He looked away. I couldn't see exactly where, of course, but I don't think it was anything in particular anyway.

"My story..." He hesitated. "My story really isn't that good. My parents died, I got to an orphanage and Wammy found me. What about you?" I knew, and he knew I knew, that it wasn't the whole story. But I decided to let it go and shrugged.

"Same here, except the orphanage. I don't know how Wammy found me, probably did my old school contact him, but I never got send to an orphanage."

"Be glad about that. I don't know how they are in the Netherlands, but they probably suck. No matter whre you are, livning at an orphanage is like living in hell."

"Where are you from, really?"

"Depends on how you look at it. I'm born in Russia, but I don't have any real memories of it, and I don't speak a single word of Russian. We moved to the US when I was about three, so that's all I know. Except for Wammy's, of course. I've been here for the past two years, and it's awesome."

Two years. That means he got here when he was eight, and that his parents died around seven-eight... That was really sad, in a way. I mean, we're all sad, but I got ten years. He got seven.

I didn't have more time to think of it, though, 'cause Kati decided to show up.

"I'm sorry it took so long" she said, sitting down. "But I had to tune it. A lot."

I shrugged. Matt didn't say anything and she threw him a glance.

"So, have you decided to start talking yet, or are you still pissed?" He glared at her.

"I want my GameBoy back." God, was he pouting? Damn... Well, he was ten, after all. When spending time with him, I forgot he was so fucking young; he was so incredible mature for his age.

"Fine. Just don't get too obsessed again, ok? You can't have me worrying over you all the time, Matty."

She handed him the lime green toy and Matt immediatley turned it on and returned to his sweet game-world. I couldn't help but chuckle and Kati joined in. Matt just rolled his eyes.

"So, did you have any interesting conversations while I was away?" she said, leaning back on the tree.

"Nope. Mello here just informed me that you're gonna beat me up unless I start talking." Matt's voice came from the gameboy. Kati raised her eyebrows at me.

"Well," I shrugged, "You did throw a lot of death threaths at me yesterday. I didn't get the impression that you have the best temprament."

She laughed. I wasn't sure how much of mine and Matt's conversation I should tell her, and I shot a questioning look to him. He just shook his head and I nodded.

I hoped we'd been thinking of the same thing. But for now, I'd just laugh with them.

The rest of the day passed without any special happenings, we sat under the tree in a comfortable silence. Sometimes, it was nice to just shut up. It wasn't actually silence (Kati was playing the guitar) but it was nice. I ate chocolate, Matt toyed with his GameBoy and time passed.

Eventually, though, we realised it was dinner time. Since nothing happened then either, I'm just going to skip that part.

After dinner we got to our rooms, said goodnight, fell asleep. Yada, yada, yada. Summaries are great when nothing is going on, don't you think?

When I woke up the next day I realised it was the first day of school. And I was not exited.

Matt seemed to be as happy as myself, wich was not happy, and we didn't say a thing until breakfast when we joined in with Kati. They had promised to give me some tips about teachers and stuff, so I brought my schedule.

When we sat down with our cereal, Kati immediatley started to analyze it.

"Huh" she said, "Seems like you haven't got your real schedule yet. Well, guess that comes after a while, when they know you better."

I frowned. "Real schedule?"

"Yeah, you see, when you first arrive you get a standard schedule." she gestured towards the piece of paper, leaning her head on her hands. "But eventually you get one that contains only the subjects you enjoy and do good in. Like me. I have only practical lessons, like music and arts and stuff like that."

"And I have practically nothing but tech subjects." Matt said, looking at me. "And then there are some things everybody's got, like history and English and Maths and stuff like that. Those you just can't get away from." He shrugged.

"So, what do you think my schedule's gonna turn out like?" I asked.

Kati shrugged, too.

"Depends what you like and do good in. I have no idea what classes suits you best, so I can't tell."

I nodded and chewed on my lip softly.

After that, we began going through the different classes I would be taking, and they pointed out some teachers that I shoud treat in certain ways or things I wasn't allowed to do with one, but perfectly fine with another.

"Allways smile when you speak to Ms. McAnder, and she will love you. But never try to show off for Mr. Robinson, he's immune to all of that shit; just do your best and he'll accept it."

By the time of my first lesson, my schedule was filled with small notes and doodles about the different teachers, and I had some trouble reading what class I'd be taking.

Turns out, it was History. I kind of liked history, it was interesting to read about the past. The teacher was Mr. Robinson, so I guess I'd just be myself. Not to brag, but I allways give a 100% if I'm at all intersted in the subject.

Let me explain how the classrooms were placed, so you don't start wondering how I found my way the first week.

There were 16 classrooms, and all of them lay in the same corridor. They each had letter, for example my History class would be in D. It was really easy and I was thankful. I would never had found my way around if they had been scattered around the mansion.

Anyway, Mr. Robinson opened the door to the classroom a couple of minutes before the lesson started, and in that time I recieved some books and informed him on what I knew of history. Turns out, I was in head of them and he gave me some alternative pages to read. I still had to be active with the rest of the class, but he would give me seperate stuff to read in on, since I already knew most of what they were going through.

"Let's see..." Mr. Robinson said, looking over a placement map. "You'll be seated in the front row, to the left." He pointed out a desk at the window. Great, that meant I could spend time lookign out of it in case I got bored.

"And you'll be sitting with another new boy. His name is... Let's see... Near. I think that's how you pronounce it."

I felt my eye twitch. I'd be sitting with Albino Freak? Great. Fucking excellent.

I didn't say anything about it, though, I just nodded and marched over to my seat. Kati and Matt had explained complaining didn't do shit when it was to Mr. Robinson, so no need to leave a bad impression. Just accept facts.

Near showed up like, ten seconds before class started, wearing his pajamas. A few of the girls giggled, but he just quickly talked to Mr. Robinson who handed him a few books and sent him off to sit next to me.

"Good day, Mello." He said calmly beside me. I mumbled 'hi' back and didn't for one second move my eyes off the window. "Seems we'll be sharing most classes for a while." He said, eying my doodled scedule.

I got relieved that Mr. Robinson decided to start the class just after Near had said that. This was going to be a long day.

And it was. Turns out, Albino Freak was right. We _did_ share the same schedule. And we allways sat beside eachother. It didn't help to relise we had the same knowledge about everything. As soon as that came to my mind, it was impossible for me not to turn it into a challenge.

I would be better than Albino Freak. I was going to beat him.

After history, we had Science and then lunch, wich I didn't have at the same time as Matt and Kati. So I sat alone, looking evil and scaring people away. It was kind of funny, actually.

When I had finished the broccoli pie that was the lunch I went back to our room to drop the books I'd recieved. We had a ten-minute break between classes to do this, but I'd been held back on both History and Science to give the teachers a more exact desctiption of what I'd learned in the Netherlands. Turns out, Science would be a bitch.

History wasn't a real problem, since it was all the same except that I knew it in Dutch, but Science was something else. I hadn't really thought about it, but everything was different in English and I couldn't understand shit. Besides, Science was one of the subjects that I found really boring; I barely knew anything, even in Dutch. Great, huh?

I just hoped I'd get my personal schedule soon. Speaking of schedules, I realised my 40-minute lunch had almost ended and that Matt's clock said 11:58 AM.

I quickly got down to classroom F to start my English class. Turns out, that wasn't as bad as I had excpected. I've allways been talented in language, so the teacher - Ms. McAnder - told me I had some minor things to read in on, but nothing big. She told me I had a very 'developed language' and that I'd probably do good. I just smiled through the whole conversation, like Matt and Kati had told me to, and she seemed really happy with me. I would definitley have a lot of English.

Since every class was about 90 minutes long, the next would be the last for the day. Also, since it was Computer Knowledge (I didn't even know you could do lessons on that) I would be having it with Matt.

I quickly got down to classroom P wich, along with O, contained computers. Matt was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his GameBoy. I got down next to him; it was about five minutes before the lesson would start.

"Hi." He said, looking up from his Mario game. "So, how's the first day of school?"

"OK." I shrugged. "History is good, Science sucks, English was great and now Computer Knowledge. One thing that's really dragging it down, though, is the fact that I allways end up next to Albino Freak."

He raised his eyebrows. "Albino Freak?"

"His name is Near, but he's a freak and albino, so Albino Freak. He's my little cousin, got here the same day as me and I hate him."

"Whoa, hang on." Matt was staring at me. "He's your _cousin_?"

I sighed. "Yeah. my mum's sister was his mother. They all kind of died at the same time, so we ended up together."

He was still staring at me, though he didn't have time to say anything since the teacher got there, indicating the break was over.

Computer Knowledge was really lame. I wasn't a tech junkie, like Matt, but I still didn't learn shit. Ignoring the teacher, instead I watched Matt hack peoples accounts on Facebook. Faceraping people really _is_ fun; we got into a 39-year-old, suited and boring man's profile and started posting links to My Little Pony-clips on YouTube. (Matt also hacked through the school's safety system so that we got acces to YouTube.)

At the end of the class, neither of us had really learned anything but we'd laughed the whole way through and the teacher - Mr. Frisc, I think his name was - seemed kind of pissed, so we quickly got out of the room, still giggling.

Looks like school wasn't going to be that bad, after all.

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**AN: Mello in school! Yay!**

**Um, so yeah... I'll upload another chapter tomorrow, would post it now but my mum is already nagging that I have to go to sleep and I don't have time for a spell check right now, so I'll get it up tomorrow.**

_**Like/don't like? Review and tell me what you think :)**_


	6. Meeting Roger

**EDIT: I re-uploaded this after a more throrough spellcheck. Yay me!**

**AN: Chap upload! Wie!**

**Roger pisses me off... I think I made him a bit more of a child-hater than he is in the series, but whatever.**

**R&R and make me happy! :D**

* * *

Once me and Matt got away from the none-too-happy teacher, we quickly decided to go back to our rooms. I still hadn't seen Kati in the whole day, but Matt told me she finished her last class about twenty minutes before us.

"Trust me" he said, "She'll be in her room. She allways is."

"But if she's not?" I was kind of eager to talk to her. God that sounded so wrong... I just mean that she and Matt were my first friends and I had had a lot of impression that day. That's all.

Matt rolled his eyes. "If she's not, you'll notice."

I didn't quite understand what he meant, but it got really clear as soon as we got ino our corridor. The walls seemed to vibrate softly, and I quickly connected it with a bass turned up way too much, wich I connected to the fact that someone was blasting music so loud the corridor seemed like one of those clubs where people go to dance until they pass out.

And I could only think of one person I had met so far that would want to blast their eardrums by turning the place into a local dance club.

Matt went straight too her door, and I followed. However, when I did a motion to knock (or rather bang at the door) Matt shooked his head.

"No idea. She ain't gonna hear you." I didn't really take that as a surprise, since he almost had to yell to make himself heard.

And when he onpened the door, I actually had to stepp back. _Holy fuck, shouldn't she be deaf by now?_

Apparently not.

Kati lay on her bed, seeming unaware that we (or, well, Matt) had entered her room. She had a couple of books spead out in front of her and she was obviously doing some sort of calculation, judging from the deep frown on her face and the pencil she was chewing on.

I still couldn't get near her room, but Matt didn't seeme that troubled. I guess you got used to the volume of her music, wich now - with no door in the way - almost killed my hearing totally. The fact that she was listening to some kind of metal didn't really help, either.

However, when Matt turned the music off, the silence that followed almost hurt my ears. But at leas then I could enter the room. Kati had turned her head towards Matt, who was leaning himself on her piano.

"What the fuck, Matt?" I heard her say through the ringing in my ears. "I am trying to work here."

"And we are trying to keep our hearing intact." He snorted back at her. "You know how annoying it is to not bea able to think due to your goddamn music."

She rolled her eyes. "Come on, it's not that loud."

"Yeah, it is." I said. "For fucks sake, the walls were _vibrating_."

She snorted, but didn't take it any further.

"What the fuck were you listening to, anyway?" I continued.

"The Sledge by Dream Evil." She pointed to a box on the floor, wich contained several CD's. I walked over to it. "D.E. aren't my favourite band, but they're good to help me think."

"'Help me think' my ass" Matt replied. "You only play it to annoy people."

She sniggered somewhat. "Not only."

As they continued to fuss, I flipped through the CD's in the box on the floor. She had some mixtures of bands there. The Killers, Queen, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Eminem, Jamie Cullum and some band called the Sisters of Mercy. What kind of band name is that? But, hey, I guess they're good. (Besides, those bands are only the ones I can remember. She must've had like thirty CD's there.)

"You have a real wierd taste in music, y'now that?" I said, holding up a disc with some guys called Billy Talent. "I don't even know half of these people. Who the fuck are The Hellacopters?"

Kati shrugged and walked over to the box to crouch beside me. "Swedish band. They're actually quite good." She flipped through the cases, pulling out a disc that said Puccini. "But I don't really have a special taste in music, I just listen to the thing I feel for." She opened her Cd-player and put the CD in. Turning the volume down to a decent level, she quickly clicked her way to some track.

When she pressed play, the voice of a woman came out of the speakers. Opera. I scowled. I knew I recognized it, and the name popped into my head when the orchestra came in.

"Madame Butterfly?" I said unbelivingly. "You listen to opera?"

"Well, as I said" She shrugged, "I listen to whatever I feel like for the moment. Overall, I listen to practically anything you can come up with."

Matt rolled his eyes. "Fine, just brag on."

Right then, the woman got into a falsetto part that gave me goosebumps. Her voice was just so clean and perfectly beautiful.

Soon after that, the song ended and Kati pressed the 'repeat' button.

"That's really the only one I like" she confessed. "I'm not a big Puccini fan. Anyway, why did you guys decide to rudely cadge my time?"

"No reason" Matt said blatantly. "We finished school and got bored, besides it's kind of hard to hear your thoughts when you play your music that loud."

Kati changed CD again. This one was darker and had more of a goth touch. She threw me the case to me. The Sisters of Mercy - First and Last and Allways. They were actually quite good, and the singer's voice was really... Unique. I don't know how the fuck else to describe it, ok?

"Oh, right" she said, turing to me. "How was the first day of school?"

I shrugged. "History, English and Computer knowledge is great. Science sucks, basicly."

She snorted. "You tell me about it. I hate science. And Gym."

We then got into a discussion of what classes we would like to wipe off of the face of Earth. An hour later, we had all agreed on Science and Gymnastics, while we disagreed on some stuff. Kati hated all classes involving languages that she didn't already speak, while I loved them and Matt was kind of indifferent. On the other hand, I couldn't se any reason at all to have 'technology' - whatever that was - but Matt seemed to think of it as God's gift to the human race. Oh, wait. That was Nintendo. Right.

Anyway, he loved it.

Matt and I agreed on Maths, but Kati argumented that the world as we knew it wouldn't exist withouth Maths. And as right as she was, it's still dead boring.

In the end, we just had to agree to disagree on a lot of stuff.

Next, I'm gonna spare you a lot of boringness that followed. We didn't really do much, listened to some of Kati's music, threw stuff out of the windows to see if we could hit anyone, and then ended up clogging one of the toilets simply out of boredom.

Then, Matt and Kati ran off to hide as Roged went bazurk. I got them down from the tree - same as the one me and Kati hid in - forty-five minutes later.

Then dinner came, and then we went to bed.

When I think of it, nothing really happened the next couple of days. I had more classes, and quickly realised my personal schedule would consist mostly of different languages.

In the basic schedule, you read French, Spanish and German, simply because these were the most popular languages in Europe except for English. Apart from that, you hd a class called 'alternative language' in wich you could choose between practically every language currently existing.

I immediatly wanted to read tons of them, but since I could only choose one, I took Japanese.

Apart from that, nothing really special occured. The best lessons, apart from language, were the ones I shared with Kati or Matt. I had a Gymnastics class, Music, Arts class and one History with Kati, while Computer Knowledge, an English, Maths and History class were with Matt. The History class were the bst, since it was with both of them.

I usually studied during the lessions, but on that History class, none of us could focus. We would just talk about other stuff, send notes to eachother, or Kati would draw hilarious portraits of people in the room.

The one thing, though, that really dragged everything down was Fucking Albino Freak.

We still had every class together, and if it weren't one with Kati or Matt, I'd be sure to sit next to him, wich only made me more annoyed every time he answered a question right. After a while, I felt like ripping his eyes out.

FOR FUCKS SAKE, DID THE KID KNOW _EVERYTHING?_

He had an answer to whatever question anyone gave him, and it was right about 99.9% of the time. I got really pissed eventually. The fact that he also studied Japanese didn't make me much happier. At least he didn't know Kanji; that would have been crossing the line.

Kati and Matt ended up spending a lot of time trying to cheer me up. I really, really hate Near. Like, _really_ fucking much.

One last thing that I remembered was the lunch on Friday, wich I shared with Kati. And Hannah.

After spending an hour with the freak, I really apologized to Kati for making Hannah stalk her. That girl really drove me to the edge of killing something. God.

Anyway.

That night we spend with homework. As lame as it may sound, the homework was fucking _hard_. I mean, I had been there a week, but I had got three essays to write - in English, History and Science - I had to fill at least two a4-papers with everything I had learned in the Netherlands.

Apart from that, I had gotten words to read in on language - 25 in Spanish, French and German - and some Kanjis to study. I really wasn't used to or prepared for this shit.

As I banged my head into the wall when I realised I had to write another page for my Science essay, Matt and Kati looked up at me. She was still working on her Maths calculation, while he was actually trying to build a working solar cell withouth descriptions.

"Just wait until you get your real problems to solve." Kati said.

They had explained that all kids were given hard problems and puzzles to fix. And with hard, it's _hard_. For example, Kati was working on calculating **π**. And with that, I meant she had to write down the 100 first numbers. And she had to do it without using any kind of technology.

She had gotten to 89 so far, but had been working on it for about three weeks. She was frustrated that she had lost a weekend's work last week, when I had come.

Matt, on the other hand, seemed to have his task under more control. After all, he was the fucking tech-genious, and wasn't that far from completing his solar cell. Though I can't tell you how he built it, simply because I didn't understand shit of what he was saying wen he tried to explain his work.

Anyway, I eventually got done with my fucking Science essay and then moved on to history and English. Trust me, they were easier. It really does make a difference when you enjoy the subject.

The next day, I got called to Roger's office to recieve my personal schedule. I was anxious to meet him after all the things Kati and Matt had told me about him - I still hadn't seen him, even though we had clogged up the toilets. Appatently, he only wanted Matt and Kati (most likely because they were the ones he knew commited these kinds of rulebreaks) and I had yet to meet him.

So when I knocked on the wooden door with his name on it, my heart was thumping a bit faster than usual. Then I opened the door, and behind the desk is Roger.

Turns out, he's an old, skinny man with suit and glasses.

The very shock paralyzed me, and I didn't even answer his 'good-day'.

He scowled at me and I blushed and stammered a "Hello, my name is Mello a-and you sent for me."

"Ah, yes. Mello." The way he said my name gave me goosebumps. "Have a seat."

As I made my way to the oak desk, I felt his eyes on me like a hawk prowling on it's prey. Okay, so now I knew why Matt and Kate hated this guy. He was fucking creepy!

"If I am informed correctly, you are here to recieve your more... Personal schedule?" I nodded slightly and he picked up a brown file, flipping through the pages. "Seems like most of the teachers have a good first impression, so that states you're a charming young man."

Wait, what the_ fuck_? So now I was convinced he was some kind of pedophile, and it really freaked me out. I sat awkwardly in the chair and just wished to whatever that he wouldn't jump me or anything.

Putting the file down, Roger lent forward on his elbows to observe me. The way his eyes didn't leave mine for a second didn't really help the impression I had that he was going to lock me up in a cellar somewhere.

"So, Mello" Again, the freaky name thing! "What classes do you wish to take?"

I squirmed awkwardly in my seat, turning my eyes away as I spoke.

"Well... I really like to read languages." It came out sounding more like a question than a statement, and I silently cursed myself. "I think it's... Well, not easy, but..."

"Interesting?" He interrupted me and I managed to throw a look at him. Roger pulled out some papers from the file. "Let's see... The English teacher thinks that you have a developed language, wich I have also heard from other teachers, so it seems about true. The teachers in Gremany, Spanish and French all say that you seem interested to learn, wich is a good sing though you don't have any real knowledge of the languages." It was obvious he taunted me, and I narrowed my eyes slightly, but decided to let it go. "Furthermore, the teacher of Alternative Languages said that you expressed a will to read multiple languages. Would you care to explain what he mean by that?"

Roger really pissed me off. I wasn't even scared anymore, just angry. How the fuck was I supposed to know that?

"Well... I guess what he ment was... That I want to read a lot of different languages?"

"And what languages are those?"

I frowned. Was this guy trying to interrogate me or someting?

"Erm, I think the ones that are available and I felt an interest to learn was, apart from English, German, Spanish and French, Japanese, Russian, Italian and Latin."

He raised his eyebrows. "Those are an awful lot of languages for an eleven-year-old boy. Do you really think you'll be able to keep up in classes?"

"Well, yeah, as long as I study, but that would go for any class, no matter how my schedule look."

"And Latin? Isn't it a bit strange to read what is considered a dead language?"

My eye twitched. I felt like punching him at this point; just accept that I want to fucking read my languages and I'll be fucking happy!

"Well, Latin is something a bit more personal."

"How so?" I swear, he leaned a bit forward.

"I'm sorry, but that's none of your business." I snorted.

Roger seemed to take great offense and I mentally rolled my eyes. Dramaqueen.

He lent back in his chair, eyes still focused on mine.

"Well, if that's how you want it I'll fill your schedule with as many different languages as possible." His voice was ice cold, and the freaky feeling was back. "Unless there is something else you wanted, I would prefer you to leave now. I do not have all the time in the world."

"Well, just one more thing." I stood up. "If you can fit it into my new scedule, I would very much like to have Computer Knowledge as well. I have allways found technology a bit fascinating."

"I'll see what I can do. You will come here tomorrow, 12.00PM to get it." He clearly stated he wanted me to leave, and I did so, thankful to get out of that fucking room.

I still had goosebumps when I got back to our room.

When I opened the door, both Kati and Matt were inside. She sat on the windowframe and he in his bed, with his GameBoy open. Most likely I had interrupted some conversation between them, but I seriously couldn't care less.

"How bad was it?" Kati said, frowning by the look on my face. It was most likely some mixture of anger and disgusted fear. I got a bar of chocolare from my bedside table, and sitting down on my bed I ripped it open.

"I'm just glad he didn't rape me. Seriously, is he a pedophile?"

"No, at least I don't think so, but I also had that expression the first time I met him." Matt shuddered. "Creepy."

"Well, at least I see why you avoid him. I really got bad vibes, and I have to go back tomorrow."

They guaranteed that if I was gone for more than thirty minutes they would call the cops.

Next day, I once again knocked on Roger's door at 12PM sharp.

He called for me to enter, and as I closed the door behind me he picked up a paper from his desk.

"Here is your new schedule, Mello." I quickly walked over and recieved it from him, though I didn't look at it. Time for that later.

"Thank you." I said, since it felt kind of a good idea to not piss him off too much. "Is that all?"

"Yes." But as I started to make my way to the door, he continued. "Oh, wait. I just remembered. You share rooms with a boy named Matt, if I am correct?"

I scowled. "Yeah, why so?"

"Are you good friends with this Matt?" Again, the prowling thing. Now I got really pissed/freaked out.

"He's a good guy."

I got the impression saying that he was my best friend ever wouldn't be very smart. Roger still held my gaze, but now I got the feeling he was planning something.

"Well" He said. "Just be careful about him. Matt and his friend Kati, I think her name is, are far from the best company a talented boy like yourself should be spending time with."

If I had been close to punch him before, it was nothing compared to how much I felt like hitting him now. Insulting me is okey. Invading my personal life gets me pissed, but I can live with it unless it's too bad. But telling me that my only friends ever are the worst company I could have is crossing the line. Not just crossing it, it's totally destroying the line and then going a thousand miles away from the ruins.

"I'll keep it in mind." I managed to keep my voice steady before I got out and slammed the door behind me.

I needed chocolate if I wanted to keep myself from blowing up.

Now.

* * *

**AN: Err, Mello's pissed... Big news. He's allways pissed.**

**Ok, not really, but still xP**

**Err... Review? :)**


	7. Sleepy Time!

**AN: New chappy! :)**

**(Yeh, chappy. You got me right xP)**

**This is almost dedicated to the 'Horizontal Ruler'button... I ended up using a lot of those.**

* * *

The second I got out from Roger's office, I pulled out a chocolate bar from my pocket and viciously smapped a chunk of it. I almost crushed the thing in my hands when I thought back on his last comments; however, as the cocoa sweetness worked its way into my system I started to cool off.

I was still pissed, but not furious, and when I was out of chocolate it was more annoying. Of course, I still hated him, but I wasn't feeling like punching something.

When I got back to our room, noone was there. I raised my eyebrows. _If they're not here, where the fuck are they? _

I mean, we practically never hung out at another place than me and Matt's room, so if bot of them ar suddenly gone, something's up. I considered the places they could've gone as I walked over to my bedside table, opened the drawer and pulled out three new bars of chocolate.

Evidentially, there was only one place they could have gone to (assuming I knew them as well as I thought I did) and that was Kati's room. So, I left our room - nomming chocolate, of course - and knocked on her door.

"Come in." As i guessed, Matt answered and I entered the room.

He was sitting on her bed, GameBoy in hand, and Kati was placed at her piano. I couldn't see her face, but judging from the sweet music that left it, and the fact that Matt invited me into the room, she was deeply focused on the keys.

I would probably never stop to be surprised by her musicaltiy. As I walked over the room to sit next to Matt, I ended up looking at her fingers as they softly moved over the keys, with a coordination that would have made daVinci jealous. (Or, well, not literally... What the fuck, you get the point!) Her face was completely relaxed, but I could sense she was deeply concentrated.

I eventually turned my head to Matt, who was back to his GameBoy.

"So, why did Mozart over there decide to brag the shit out of us?" I said, unwrapping my third chocolate bar.

"She suddenly realised she had her musical homework to do, and you were out getting perved up by Roger, so..." He answered without even looking up from the game. "By the way, how did you schedule turn out?"

"Um..." I didn't know. So far, I hadn't even looked at the wrinkly piece of paper. I had totally mashed it when I got out from Rogers office, so some parts were kind of hard to read in the dim light. "Seemed I got all the things I wished for." Yup, English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Latin and German. And Computer Knowldge.

I glanced over at Matt, who was still playing on his GameBoy. (Kati hadn't even turned her head during our conversation. Deep focused kid, or what?) "What are you playing anyway?" Seriously, it had to be fucking awesome if he spend so much time on it.

"It's called Super Mario." He somewhat turned the thing so I could see what he was doing. "You're this fat, Italian plummer who is on an epic quest to save Princess Peach."

I scowled. "Peach? Isn't that like, a fruit or some shit like that?"

"Yeah, it's kinda wierd, but whatever." The tiny little red thing on the screen jumped over som pools of lava. "Peach, anyway, is trapped by King Bowser, a big dragun-turtle type of thing with spikes on his shell."

"This game makes no sense at all." I shook my head in amusement. "Seriously, what the fuck? Is that mushrooms?"

"Yeah, they're evil. But not all mushrooms; some give you more life or make you increase in size."

"Okey, it definitely makes no sense at all. How can you enjoy a game like that?"

He placed his GameBoy back on his legs, then started furiously pushing buttons. I supposed he met a boss or something, but I really didn't care all that much.

"Well, it's easy" he said (Still bashing the thing with his thumb; it was incredible how he could stay focused on two things at the same time!) "In the end, Good allways win; Mario saves Peach and the bad guy gets his punishment. In a game, you know it'll end happily."

I was kind of struck by that. Of course, it made sense; who wouldn't want to wish the world was like videogames? Only problem, the key item was_ wish_. The world was cruel, and games merely a way for people to tryand recreate the perfect reality.

I decided, though, to not say this. If Matt enjoyed his games, who cared wether they were rational or not?

Instead, I sucked on my neglected chocolate, leaning back to the wall. I closed my eyes and let my mind drift away to the sweet music that flowed from Kati's piano. She really was talented... I had to tell her that later. Not now. I didn't feel like opening my eyes or to move.

My mind slowly faded into nothing, and without noticing it I fell asleep.

* * *

When I opened my eyes again, I was still in Katis room, but now the dim light had gone into as good as complete darkness. I blinked a couple of times, quickly getting used to the absence of light.

It was silent, except from the soft breathing of... Woever it was that lay next to me in Kati's bed. Their head was at the other end of it, so I had to sit up in order to recognise Matt. He was stretched out on the bed, fast asleep. His GameBoy lay on the floor next to the bed.

I quickly scanned the room to see if Kati was there, and quickly located her on the floor. She was laying curled up in a ball on a pile of what seemed to be a mixture of clothes, blankets and pillows in the middle of the room. Though I could only see her back, she too seemed asleep.

I yawned silently, blinking a few times. I considered going back to sleep, but felt something gnawing inside me. I quickly located it as chocolate withdrawal, and you can't ignore chocolate withdrawal. At least not if you're me.

Ok, so I had to get my hands on some sweet cocoa. Now, how to do that?

I judgeg I could just carefully leave the room, get chocolate, and go back. Shouldn't be that hard, since my eyes had gotten used to the darkness. Very well, better get started then.

I swung my legs to the floor, avoiding hitting Matt, and slowly stood up before moving to the door. Kati was easy to avoid, she wasn't really taking up any space, and I quickly found myself in the lit corridor.

The light stung my eyes, and I squinted hard as I stappled to me and Matt's room. It was dark in there as well, wich was kind of a relief for my vision. I raised my eyebrows as I realised Kati had been in there; our pillows and blankets were missing, and I highly suspected she was curretly sleeping on them.

It took me about a minute - when I was already biting into my chocolate - to realise she had taken my pillows. Both of them.

My eyes shot wide open and I actually dropped what I was holding.

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

One of my pillows contained my mother's Bible.

Panic swelled over me and I threw myself over my chocolate. It took me about three seconds to prop the whole thing into my mouth, and while I was chewing on it - the fact that I had to chew kinda indicates the amount, I must've looked like a hamster - I could feel it spread in my veins like waves of calmness.

By the time I had swallowed it all, my panik had dissolved somewhat and I had actually come up with a plan.

The pillowcase on the pillow my mother's Bible lay hidden in was black with white dots, and it was the only one any of the three of us had. Wich meant, I could easily recognise it if I saw it. So the plan was to get back in Kati's room, get the pillow, take the Bible out, hide it in my room, put the pillow back and then fall asleep in her bed again.

Why it was so important none of them knew that I had the Bible I had no idea, but anyway I didn't want them to know.

So, putting my plan into action, I got back into Kati's room. Scanning my eyes over the mountain of stuff she was curled up on, I spotted my pillow. Thankfully, it wasn't one she was laying on, so it should be easy to take it. My heat beat as crazy when I crouched beside the pile on the floor, reaching my hand out to get the pillow. Though she wasn't laying on it, Kati was still close to it and I tried my best not to wake her.

When I slowly grasped the pillow and pulled it towards me, she made a small shifting motion and I froze. Luckily, she just took a deep breath, mumbled something in her sleep and then got still. My heart started beating again and I sighed.

I quickly removed the Bible, made a quick check and saw - to my big relief - that it wasn't harmed in any way. Then I put the pillow back before quickly giong back to my own room, where I quickly hid it amongst my underwear. If anyone looked there, something was definitely up.

Then I devoured my last chocolate bar - _Note to Self: Get more chocolate_ - to calm my nerves before returning to her room. No-one woke up as I climbed back into Kati's bed, and I took a deep breath out of relief. Evertything had worked out, and the Bible was safe.

Just as I allowed myself to relax, Matt turned. I felt like a deer caught in the headlights, but then realised he was still asleep, just flipping over. However, my space was drastically decreased as he had rolled towards me; we were currrently somewhat pressed up against eachother. Luckily, since he was a bit shorter than me I didn't have his feet in my face, but it was still annoying. I sat up again and tried to push him to the other side of the bed.

And, of course, this was when he woke up. However, I didn't notice, just kept on with my work to make some space.

"Mello?" He mumbled sleepily. "What are you doing?"

I looked down at him. He had fallen asleep with his goggles on, and their orange plastic met my eyes.

"I'm trying to get som space" I whispered back. "Would you mind scooting 'couple of inches?"

"Sure." He sidled a bit, dividing the area of the bed equally between us. I smiled.

"Thanks." I lay down again, but his voice interrupted my thoughts.

"Mels..." Mels? Since when does he call me Mels? "Why were you awake anyway?"

"Had to get some chocolate."

"Oh... Okey." He curled up into a ball - much like Kati - a movement that ended up placing him at my hip. I looked down at him. He was laying with his face towards me. "G'night Mels." He mumbled and then relaxed.

I felt like telling him it wasn't really night - I had noticed his digital clock said it was acually 4.56PM - but I decided it didn't really matter.

"Sleep tight, Matty." Matty? So now I was giving him nicknames? _Might as well start to call Kati Kate, just to complete the triangle. _I thought.

Whatever. Why was I thinking stuff like this? It made about as much sense as Matt's videogame, and for the second time in four hours I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

I woke up because someone was poking me. I groaned and slapped their hand away.

"Huh" I heard someone say. "You were right."

"What the fuck is up with you people and poking?" I snarled at them. "Seriously?"

Kati raised her eyebrows. "I've been shaking you for about five minutes. Stop sleeping so hard and we'll stop poking you."

"Whatever." I sat up on her bed and quickly scanned the room. Kati was standing in front of the bed, and Matt lay on the pile of soft stuff she'd previously been sleeping on. "Why'd you wake me up?"

"Dinner time." I yawned and swung my legs over the bed.

"What time is it?"

"About half seven." Kati didn't seeme to realise how odd that had sound, and I scowled slightly when she turned to walk over to the door.

"Half seven?" I said.

Kati turned. "What?" Confused expression. "Oh, sorry. Half past six. I sometimes get stuck in Swedish way of talking when I've just woke up. Half seven is the way you say half past six in Sweden, simply." She shrugged. "After all, it is my native language. Can't help myself from slipping sometimes."

I nodded. Walking over to her, I ruffled his hair. "Come on, you dork. We'll need some energy if we're gonna stay awake all night."

He snorted. "Yeah, I bet you need more of that." He said ironically, standing up. "After all, sleeping sixteen hours in a day and eating tons of chocolate don't give an ounce of energy."

My eyes narrowed. "So what? I like chocolate."

"Yeah, but it gets kinda ridiculous when you have to wake up every fourth hour to refill on it."

"Oh shut up. If anything's ridicolous, it's your games!"

Kati just shook her head and left to go and eat. Not that I blame her, we were a bit annoying, and we kept fighting about whose addiction were the lamest.

* * *

Once we got down to the dining hall, Kati was already seater at a corner of the room. She sat alone and had put her feet on the table to clearly state that she didn't want any company.

Not that me and Matt cared. We just walked over to her and sat down on the other side of the table with our plates. If I had the choice, I would have just skipped the dinner itself and jump straight to dessert. After all, it was chocolate pudding. But I had tried that practically every time they served dessert and knew it was a waste of time and effort, since Kati and Matt allways forced me to eat what they called 'real food'.

So instead I just tried to finish the paste salad as soon as possible, while all the time thinking of chocolate. Ok, so that's a bit wierd (even I admit it) but come on. We didn't call it 'addiction' without reason.

Anyway. I get of the subject way too often, aren't I?

When we sat down, Kati was currently glaring at her shoes. At first I thought she was merely pissed at us for acting like we were still in Kindergarten. But as it turned out, she wasn't. Or, well, she just thought of something else.

"I gotta get new shoes." I lifted my gaze to her. She was scowling and still glaring at her worn-out pair of Converse. "Or else winter's gonna be a bitch."

She really had a point in that. Truthfully, I have never seen a more abused pair of shoes. They had most likely been black once, but now resembled more of a brownish green tone. The soles practically didn't exist anymore, there were big holes at her heels, the pad in front and the white rubber had big cracks in it. It had gone so far that the whole inner page of her right foot was showing. Literally, she was walking on it.

"I told you that" Matt said, "About three months ago."

She rolled her eyes and took her feet off the table.

"Yeah, but it wasn't bad then. I love my Converse."

"Well, give'em a nice funeral."

"I'm not gonna stop wearing then completely, just in the winter."

He stared at her. I was actually kinda surprised that he looked up from his GameBoy, since that basicly never happened. "You're telling me you'll keep wearing the most worn-out pair of Converse humanity has ever seen?"

Kati snorted and threw a slice of bread at him. He dodged it with ease. "Stop overdoing it."

"'m not overdoing it" he said, chucking a breadslice back at her.

"Yeah, you are." Kati was out of bread, so she just tossed an apple. He dodged again, giving the result that it hit another guy in the head.

He swung around and glared our direction. "Who threw that?" Nobody confessed, so he just threw it back at some random chick wo sat a few chairs away.

Of course, it soon escalated into a total food war. We were really amused by it, since the only people that didn't seemed to get food al over them were the three of us. Wich was hilarous since Matt and Kati were the ones that started it all.

And then we saw Roger.

He was trying to clear it up, but his attemps of getting himself heard over the turmoil were futile and he was furious by the time he spotted us. Kati was the first to notice him, and her smile was immediately obliterated.

"Holy fuck, Roger's coming." Me and Matt swung around in time to see him start to fuel away towards us.

Kati quickly jumped over the table and the tree of us fled to the door wich, fortunately, lay close. I even managed to snatch my chocolate pudding with me and quickly stuffed it down my pocket. If I was to sit in a tree or broom closet for hours, I would at least have chocolate with me!

We ran along the corridors, well aware that Roger most likely was scamming the mansion for us.

Suddenly, Kati turned left. Neither me nor Matt reacted in time to go after her, so we just kept on our old track forward while she got to one of the safe zones.

"Shit" Matt gasped as the corridor turned right and then stopped.

"What?" I back-pedaled myself. We were both panting; we had probably burned more energy in that run alone than we did in a month.

"There's only one hidingplace close, and it's not big enough to hold both of us."

"You sure?" He met my eyes, and I probably looked as desperate as he did.

"Well, we can try, but it'll be tight."

"Worth a try." He gave a nod and we took up our race.

After a few more turns, we got to a completely deserted corridor. Matt stopped in front of a door, wich he opened to reveal what looked like an empty broom closet. We knew Roger had sent people after us (their footsteps echoed between the walls) so I didn't even think before we had pressed ourselves into the tiny space. After I shut the door, I realised what he had meant by tight.

Seriously, I don't have claustrophobia, but if I did I would have killed myself. There was barely room for us to breathe, and then I was pressed up against the door and Matt to the wall. Thankfully, though, it wasn't so narrow that our faces were squeezed against eachother, but there was only about an inch between our chests.

If I thought the time I hid in the tree with Kati was awkward, it was nothing compared to now. Seriously, it felt like my face had the same colour as Matt's hair. But at least I didn't have to say anything, since we were still in danger of getting caught.

Just as the thought passed my mind, we heard the people that had been following us run past our hidingplace. My heart skipped a beat when they passed, but noone seemed to have stopped or suspect anything, so it soon restarted and I quietly sighed in relief.

Now came the question: _How long will we have to stay?_

Kati had run off to God knows where, and she was most likely in a hidingplace. If she was, that would mean that none of us would know when Roger had cooled off. That left us with two options. 1. Stick it out for so long it was obvious he had calmed down, or 2. Take the risk of feeling his wrath and leave.

I'd go with option one, clearly. The only problem was that that would leave me pressed up against Matt for hours, possibly. I was glad the lights were out.

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**AN: So, yeah, chappy 7 ends in a slight cliffhanger. Live with it. ^^**

**Now... I'm a review whore, so...**

**Review? :D**


	8. Oh, Fuck

AN: I feel awesome for updating. Like, seriously.

**Also, with this chapter I pass 20,000 words! Ohmygosh, does that feel wierd O_O**

**Warnings: (Yeah, stuff happens!) Violence and swearing (big surprise...)**

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"Hey, Matt?" I whispered into the darkness.

"Yeah?" Came the answer.

"How long do you think it'll take before it's safe to get out?"

I could almost feel him shrug, and suddenly I wished there was a lightbulb or something in there.

"Dunno. Depends on what mood he was before." He whispered. We were so close I could feel small puffs of air hitting me. "Sorry, but it's kind of hard to predict."

"'ts okay. So... Are we just gonna stay here until something happens, or what?" Why was I asking him that? Did I seriously excpect him to have an answer? Jeez, sometimes I'm stupid, even me.

"Dunno. Do you know where Kati ran off to?"

I shook my head, but then realised he of course didn't see that. "Eh, no. I hoped you'd have some idea about that?"

"Nope, sorry."

Silence. I was taking the options under more consideraton. If I left Matt here and went to find Kati, he would be safe from Roger's fury; since he couldn't be sure I had done anything that was against the rules, I could just pretend it was all Matt and Kati. Wich, well, it was. In turn, that meant I'd be pretty much safe from his wrath if he caught me.

"Matt" I whispered. "I'm gonna go out and look for Kati, ok?"

"Eh, sorry, but that's kind of stupid."

"Well, if Roger cathces me, I'm most likely off the hook. After all, it is really your fault."

He snorted. "Perhaps, but how're you going to find Kati if you don't know any of our hidingplaces except the tree?"

Oh. Hadn't thought about that. "Well..."

"I'll go. I can keep out of Roger's way, and I can also find her wether she's hiding or not. I'll be back within thirty minutes, ok?"

I nodded. "But be careful, he seemed pissed."

"Sure." With that, he squeezed himself past me and opened the door. The light blinded me, and I had to blink before I could see clearly. I got a glimpse of Matt before he closed the door; apparentely he'd been blushing as much as myself. Then, he closed it and I was alone.

At least I wasn't pressed up against anyone, and I had enough room to sit down.

I just hoped time would pass quickly.

* * *

I had no idea how long I'd been sitting there when the door opened, but my whole body felt stiff when light suddenly flooded the small space. I squinted up at the person that had opened it, thankful Matt had finally returned.

Only it wasn't Matt, it was Kati. And she was panting with a concerned and somewhat panicked scowled on her face. _What the fuck?_

"Mello... Thank God. I've been looking for you." She grabbed my hand and pulled me up without asking, and I stumbled a bit. "Where's Matt?" I stared at her. Wasn't I supposed to ask her that?

She grabbed my shoulders in lack of response. "Mello._ Where the fuck is Matt?_" Okay, so there was definitely panik in there. Her eyes were desperate as they stared into mine, and I was starting to freak out.

"I dunno! I thought he was with you!"

"But he didn't follow me! Where did he go?"

"He left to find you, since... Oh." Realisation hit me. "He didn't find you, did he?"

She shook her head. "No. When did he leave?"

"What time is it?" She showed me her wristwatch, and I blinked. I'd been sitting in that room for 90 minutes? No fucking way. But I had, wich meant Matt had been gone for over an hour.

I looked up at Kati, my expression probably saying it all. She understood perfectly, no doubt. Then her eyes wided even more, and I got a feeling she was staring at me without really seeing me.

"Oh... Fuck..." Then she bolted off, pushing her way past me. It took me a second to react, but then I ran after her.

Wich was hard, 'cause she was fucking _fast_. Though I got the impression some of that came from the sheer panik she radiated. I was struggling to keep up with her as I tried to avoid the people that were in the corridors, and the fast turns she made.

"Kati!" I shouted in an attempt to make her stop. She didn't even react, just took left and then stopped at a door. I stood behind her, struggling to breathe, when she banged it open. The room was empty. She went to the next door, wich was also empty.

"Kati... Who are you looking for?" I spit out. She ignored me, and went to a third door. This one was locked, and her eyes narrowed as she banged at it.

"Open!" No answer, but I assumed she heard something I didn't (the blood that pumped through my ears reduced my hearing) and smashed her fist at the door. "I said, fucking OPEN!"

I hadn't imagined what Kati looked like when she was angry, even less what she may look like when furious, so the picture kind of scared me.

When she didn't get an answer - and trust me, this is true - she planted her hands on either side of the door and kicked the door in.

You got me right. She fucking _kicked the door in_. Let's pause for a moment. **What the **_**fuck?**_Since when could Kati kick doors in? My jaw totally fell and I didn't move, at first. But as she entered the room, I quickly rushed to see what the fuck was going on.

There were five guys in the room, and they were standing around a corner of the room, obviously hiding something. All of them had turned to face us, and they seemed kinda scared shitless.

I don't blame them. After all, Kati looked like she was going to rip their eyes out. And she had just kicked the door in. (I can't get over the fact that she could produce that kind of strength, after all, she didn't look that muscular.)

Kati didn't say anything, just walked over to one of the guys and punched him. Right in the face. Judging from the way he stappled backwards while holding his nose - that sprayed blood - it was a hard blow.

"What the fuck are you doing?" One of the other guys shouted at her. Me, on the other hand, was purely shocked. _Note to Self: Never, Ever, piss Kati off. _Even though I estimated the guys to be about three years older and a feet taller than her, Kati had taken him down like a baloon. And she was currently staring at whatever it was that was in that corner.

"YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!" She screamed. The guy closest to her backed a step, allowing her to do some kind of martial arts kick (most likely taekwondo) wich sent the guy to the floor. Ok, it sounds a bit ridiculous, but it looked fucking cool. And freaky.

Next, stuff happened kind of quickly. I entered the room, but didn't take more than two steps before the remaining three guys circled Kati and trapped her to the wall. One of them pushed her up against it in a way that looked like he was trying to strangle her.

Kati hissed at him and scratched her hands in his face in an actual attempt to claw his eyes out. Of course, he let her go and she threw herself at him, making him fall to the floor. She then strandled him, holding his arms down with her knees while viciously punching his face.

I finally gained control over my body as the other two guys made a move to pull Kati off him. I tackled the one closest to me, causing him to stapple a bit but not actually falling over. Before he could react, I kicked him in the balls.

I'm a guy, and trust me; that shit _hurts_. I turned to face the last one, who didn't look like he was willing to put up a fight. I actually snarled at him, my teeth showing. He simply bolted for the door, followed by the four other guys. Kati was still sitting on the fifth, whose face now resembled a cut-up cow.

"Hey, I think that's enough." I told her. She stopped for a second to look up at me, still panting and with a murderous look on her face.

"Did you see what they were doing?" Actually, no. I hadn't looked at the corner; I guess I was afraid of whatever I'd see. I shook my head. "Then don't say it's enough. But you're right, I should leave him. We have more important things to deal with."

She got off the guy, who scrambled for the exit. I shot a look at the door; it was still hanging on its hinges, but the lock was completely trashed. I raised my eyebrows.

"By the way, since when can you-" I turned to her and my heart stopped as my eyes fell on the corner. Or, more exactly, on Matt, who was shaking, curled up in the corner.

His face was covered in blood, as well as part of his clothes; he looked like he'd been hit by a car. The striped shirt was torned at places, revealing pale skin covered with bruises. Matt's auburn hair was in a total mess, and I couldn't spot his goggles.

That last observation was the one that pulled me out of my shock. Matt _never_ took off his goggles. I scanned the room, and located them on the floor. Luckily, they weren't cracked, though the strap was broken; most likely from being torn off his head. I picked them up and felt a massive amount of wrage hit me like a wall. I clearly understood Kati now and I just wished those guys were still there, so I could kill them. Painfully.

No, I wished I wouldn't have let Matt leave that broom closet. Realisation dawned on me: _this is my fault. _

Though, I didn't think further of it as I knelt beside Matt's trembling figure, Kati crouching beside me. I stretched out a hand and he flinched as I touched his arm.

"Hey, Matt, don't worry, it's me." My voice was a bit shaky. "It's okay, we're here, it's over." He hugged his legs harder as a massive sob caused his body to tramble.

Tears ran down Kati's face as she pulled him into an embrace. He pressed himself agains her, like a puppy. "I'm so sorry, Matt. Please, Matty, forgive me." She mumbled into his hair. I looked up at her.

"We should probalby get out of here, they might come back." She looked at me with blurry eyes and nodded. "Matt, can you walk?"

He didn't even answer, wich I took as a 'no'. Since Kati was shaking as much as he did, I was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to carry him. I knew our room wasn't that far away, so I picked him up bridal style and started walking. He clung to my shirt and I could feel him sob.

Kati got up, still crying, and I turned my hed to her. "It's not your fault." She met my eyes.

"Yeah, it is."

"No, it's not. If it's anyones fault, it's mine. I shouldn't have let him go..." My voice broke. Fuck, don't start crying! For fucks sake, Mello, there has to be at least one of you that's not a big puddle of sap.

"Mello. It is not your fault. You didn't know this could happen, ok? I did, and I still left you."

I scowled. "Who, exactly, were those guys?" She looked away, softly chewing on her bottom lip.

"I'll tell you later. Right now, we have to focus on Matt." We were standing outside of our door, so Kati opened it and I walked in, putting Matt down on his bed.

He curled up into a ball on the sheets, putting his hands on his face. "Hey g-guys..." His voice was barely audible. "W-where are m-my goggles?"

I pulled them out of my pocket and gave them to him. "We have to get a new strap for them." He took them without looking at me, pressing the item to his chest. He really loved those goggles.

"Thank you, Mels." I smiled a little.

"No problem, Matty."

"Hey, Matt?" Kati broke in softly. "We need to clean you up. Do you think you'll be able to shower yourself, or...?"

"I'll manage... Probably." I scowled as a though hit me. Did he get raped or something? I hadn't even considered that so far, and I quickly pushed the thought out of my head.

... Why? Simply because it was one of those things you get sick by simply thinking of. Oh, so I'm okay with Matt getting beat up, but not raped? I'm twisted.

Anyway. He sat up, with some struggle, and put his feet to the floor.

"Hey, Mello?" Kati said. I looked at her. "You think you can help him? I'm gonna go get some kind of First-Aid kit or shit like that, if it's ok...?"

"Yeah. We'll be fine." She nodded, then left the room. I turned to Matt, wo was currently struggling to get up. I grabbed his hand and helped him. "You able to walk?"

He nodded, though his face was pale. I remained prepared to catch him as we walked (or well, I walked and Matt stappled) to the bathroom.

There were two, each containing a shower and one a bathtub. We went for the bathtub one. Once we got in it, I stood somewhat awkwardly at the door.

"Will you need help, or..." I said, feeling my face heating up.

"I'll call if I need your help." Matt mumbled, avoiding my gaze. His cheeks were slightly flushed, and I quickly nodded.

"Okey, I'm just gonna go get you some new clothes, but it won't take long, ok?" He nodded again and I closed the door. Once back in our room, I pulled out one of his striped shirts and a pair of baggy jeans. I hesitated a second before quickly pulling out a new pair of boxers, wich I avoided looking at.

Oh, gimme a break, I was eleven. Anything that had any kind of connection to sex was EXTREMELY awkward, ok?

I then returned to the closed bathroom door.

"Hey, Matt" I called out. "I'm back, just so you know."

"Ok." Came the muffled reply. I sat down and leant my back to the doorpost, holding Matt's clothes in a firm grip. Why I did that I don't know, but feeling his scent calmed me like chocolate.

That sounded so wrong, but I'm gonna let it be anyway. Just to make this clear: I was _not_ in love with Matt, but he was my best friend. And he had just been beat up (and my mind still insisted on holding the thought thad he'd possibly been raped) by some guys for a reason I was totally unaware of. So that small scent of Matt that stuck in his clothes just reassured me he was, in fact, alive.

Now you may find it odd that I was calmed by the fact that he was _alive_, but I found that to be much more calming than thinking he was going to be ok. Why? Well, because of a reason I won't bother to tell you that has to do with my life before. Bleh.

As I sat down, I heard the shower turn on. I had nothing to do but wait until Kati got back, so I lent my head to the wall and kind of spaced, thinking about stuff. And by stuff, I mean nothing in particular. My eyes followed small cracks in the ceiling and I pulled up one kneeto my chest and wondered how fucking long I'd have to wait until something happened. The shower was still on, so I sighed softly and shook my head to get my bangs out of my eyes. Wich, of course, didn't happen_. I have to get a haircut._

"Hey." Kati said, appearing at the end of the hallway. She was holding a red briefcase saying 'FIRST-AID-KIT' and had apparantely quickly paid a visit to her room, since she had changed from the somewhat bloody clothes she had worn before to a pair of ripped jeans and a black T-shirt. I didn't bother to move very much, just turned my head slightly and moved my eyes to her.

"Are you aware you're kind of attractive when you do that?"She said and sat down in front of me, leaning to the other wall. I blinked a few times._ Wait, __**what? **_"Just thought you'd know."

"... Okey... Thanks, I guess?" I said, a bit confused. Kati shrugged. She seemed totally untouched by the conversation, if you can call it that, and I found it to be a bit wierd. Like telling your friends you found them attractive was an everyday activity.

"You're welcome." She sighed. "How long has he been in there?"

"Ten minutes?" Esimated.

"Oh, ok." She chewed on the left side of her bottom lip, and I knew what she was thinking.

"It's not your fault." She didn't care, and I shook my head. "Who were those guys, anyway?"

"Mika, Keith, Sam, John and Carl. They're ranked third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. And..." She stopped herself at the totally confused look I gave her and started to explain. "We have rankings here. At the end of each term, Roger publish a list that ranks every child here, from number one to number... With you and Sheepy, I think we're 195 kids."

I frowned. "And they publish all of the rankings? What about the kids at the bottom?"

"Do you really think Roger cares abouth them?" Well... Not exactly. I shook my head. "Well. That list ranks every student here, and to some people their placement on that list is all that matters. Those guys are five of them. You see, before me and Matt got here, they had the five top placements. And they bragged about it. I don't know exactly what they said and did, since I wasn't here, but Matt say they were total douchebags." I snorted. Big surprise. "But then... Matt came."

She paused and looked like she was uncertain wether she should continue or not. "By the time the List was published, he'd been here about two months. And he was ranked number one." I raised my eyebrows in slight impressement. She nodded. "Yeah, I know. Anyway, the guys got furious. Not only had someone taken Mika's place - he's kind of their leader - but the kid had only been here for two months. Of course, he had to be tought a lesson. The short story, they beat him up. A lot." Wait, because of a _ranking?_ Those guys were crazy, and I got pissed off at the very thougt of it.

Seriously, beat someone up that much because of a fucking _ranking?_ Did they seroiusly think it was Matt's fault he was smart? When you're that fucked up, get help.

"And by the time I got here, he was kind of a nervous wreck. Did he tell you how we became friends?" I thought about the time we sat under the tree.

"Yeah, not much, he just said you were like a living butcherknife before you got friends. Also, he gave the impression that he was kind of eager to bond with you."

She chuckled. "Butcherknife... Yeah, most likely the best way to describe it. And 'eager to bond' is an understatement. He was fucking desperate to get a friend. He was kind of glued onto me. I hated it. Really, really hated it. Wich meant I also beat him up a while." She seemed a bit embarrassed at that, and I understood her.

"Hey, don't be ashamed. You didn't know about those guys, ok?" She shook her head, but smiled as she did so.

"Thanks, Mello. I like that about you, allways trying to make people feel better. It's nice." I smiled back, and she continued on her story. "Anyway, after a while I kind of... Got used to him. We weren't friends, but I didn't hate him. To make a long story short, again, one day Mika and Keith came to beat him up and he freaked totally. I had no idea what was going on; suddenly my little eight-year-old stalker-type thing comes running towards me in total panic, with these two big, macho guys behind him.

"We may not have been as close friends as we are now; but I still got pissed. So me and the guys got in this big fight, wich I won - of course - and they ran of with the tail behind their legs, screaming various death threaths at the ten-year-old girl that had just kicked their asses in front of the whole school." We laughed together, and she shook her head in amusement. "Of course, Roger got pissed. He had had this big talk with me in his office, wich I won. That's why he hates us, and also the reason he don't do shit to help Matt now."

I felt pissed, of course. What _the fuck_ was that guy's problem? Fine, he had a problem with us, but come on. Isn't it his job to make sure the kids here are safe? I snorted in frustrtion, but returned to the story. I had one question.

"So... They just let you go... Like that?" To me, that sounded a bit... Unbelivable, after all.

"Nah, they tried to take me down all five, and did a good job on that as well. Look." She pulled up her shirt a bit to reveal three horizontal-going scars that ran across her stomach. "They were pissed, trust me. But I kind of got back at them. Meaning, I took a baseball bat and ended up actually giving Carl a concussion." You couldn't miss the proudness in her voice. "After _that_, they left me alone, but they still hate us. And since Matt can't defend himself in any kind of way, they take out all their frustration with me on him." She sighed. "That's why I try to never leave him alone. But now you're here, wich makes that a lot easier." She finished the sentence with a soft smile.

"Oh." I didn't really know how to respond to that.

None of us had heard the shower turn off, but suddenly Matt's voice came through the door.

"Guys, if you are done talking about my dark and depressive past, would you mind giving me my clothes?" He said it without any kind of irritation or anger, but I still felt ashamed he had head us.

"Yeah, of course." I opened the door and gave it to him. Not that I actually saw him, he was standing behind tha door, but his hand came out and took it.

"Thanks." The door closed again, and a minute later he got out. "Ok, I'm done." He looked at me for the first time since we'd stormed Mika's room, wich also made another first; I had never seen him without his goggles before.

His eyes were big and dark green, and when they met mine he stopped for a second. "Your hair is blonde." He said it in a voice that held complete surprise. I raised an eyebrow.

"You noticed that now?" His cheeks turned a bit pink.

"Sorry, I thought it was some kind of orange... Y'now, since my goggles..." I smiled at him.

"No need to apologise, Matty. But perhaps this is an indication you should start taking them of at times." He rolled his green eyes. I still wasn't used to seeing him without the eyewear.

Matt looked a lot better when cleaned up, and he didn't stapple so much when we walked back to our room.

"Sit down" Kati ordered him while I closed the door, "And take your shirt off."

He obliged without questioning, wich made me wonder how many times they had been through this. Kati pressed gently at the sides of his ribcage, where bruises formed patterns on his pale skin.

I sat down at my own bed, since I didn't know shit about how to take care of wounds. I suddenly remembered I still had the chocolate pudding in my pocket, so I pulled it out and quickly swallowed the content, satisfyed with myself for picking it up.

"Jeez, you'll get cavaties if you keep eating chocolate like that." Matt said, rolling his eyes and wincing as Kati pressed down at one of his bruises. "Ouch. Be careful."

I could almost hear her roll her eyes. "Well, you don't seem to have broken any ribs. Before I start bandaging you up, is there something you want me to check on your legs?" He shook his head and she opened the medical kit. "Good. Are there any wounds somewhere that's not your upper body?" Dear God, she sounded like a nurse.

"Nopie." I snorted.

"How can you be so happy? You just got beat up!" He simply shrugged.

"It's in my nature, I guess." Kati pulled some stuff out of the red box and bent down over him.

"Sit still, or I'm gonna fuck this up." He winced as she cleaned the cut on his left side with some kind of antiseptics. Luckily, it was the only open wound and Kati patched it up quite good. She even stitched it, wich was a bit advanced. Then she taped some cotton-type-thing on, and done. The whole procedure didn't take more than five minutes.

"So what, you've done this a lot?" I asked her, and she rolled her eyes. Damn, did she like that move!

"A lot is an understatement. Not that Matt got beaten up on a regular basis after I got here, but I had some practise before as well." She said, putting everything back in the briefcase. "My mother was a nurse."

"Oh, ok." It shocked me a bit that she didn't seem to mind naming her mother at all.

"Be right back, I'll just put this away." With that, she left the room.

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AN: So, what do you think about chappy eight?

**Well, y'now the best way to tell me?**

**REVIEW! :D**


	9. Busted

**AN: ****GAAAH! I'M SO SORRY FOR NOT UPDATING!**

**I've just had so much to do! I had a huge test on Chemistry today (wich I didn't undestand AT ALL) so I haven't done much other than study. I'm so sorry, but I promise that I'll write as soon as possible tomorrow, so the next chappy shouldn't take too long, ok?**

**I feel terrible, really.**

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The next day was Monday. Favourite time of the week! Not.

I hadn't been able to fall asleep the night before (not that Matt kept me awake; he went down like a lead baloon at 9PM) so it took a lot of willpower to get up at 7AM after three hours of sleep. At least I didn't wake by Matt poking me.

I woke up by Matt almost killing his alarm clock. The fact that _that_ woke me and not the alarm itself, pretty much said it all. My face remained buried in the pillow as Matt made noises that suggested he stood up and walked past the room. I groaned as the light switch was turned on.

"Come on, Mello." Matt yawned. "School's today, so get up."

"Fuck you." I mumbled into my pillow, then glared up at him. Matt simply rolled his eyes and smacked me over the head lightly.

"Seriously, get up."

"Ngnh..." I mumbled and curled up to a ball under my blanket. I felt like telling the world to piss itself; for all I cared, the sun could explode as long as I got to sleep. _Well, that would be more like dying... _Oh, shut up!

After a couple of minutes, when I had almost dozed off again, Matt poked me through my cocoon of sheets. "Oye! Wake up, or I'll get Kati to kick your ass."

"Tell her to fuck off." I muttered, though I highly doubt he could hear the words. Most likely, all he catched was a low mubling sound.

"Ok, fine." He apparantely left the room and I, satisfyed, nuzzled down in my pillow. _Sleep, here i come! _Not.

Suddenly, my lie-in was rudely interrupted when someone pulled my sheets away. Guess who it was?

"Wake-wakey, or you'll be late for breakfast." Kati sounded thrologely annoyed, and I gave her the finger. "Seriosly, if you don't get the fuck up _now,_ I'll punch you."

I turned my head to glare at her. She glared back, and I surrendered. "I hate you." I muttered as my body unwillingly got into a sitting position. She smirked.

"Love you too. Get dressed." She left the room, closeing the door behind me to give me some privacy.

I groaned again as I forced my tired ass out of bed to put on some clothes. Baggy jeans and a black T-shirt. I was cold, so why not throw a hoodie in as well. _Whatever_... I left the room and a pissed off kind of silence floated between me and Kati. Or, well, I guess I stood for the pissed off part... She just wasn't talking.

"Matt's tech starts at 7.30, so he went ahead." She informed me when I got out of our room, but that was about it. Since both of our morning classes began at eight - wich was an English one that we'd be sharing, by the way - I was most likely having breakfast with her. After all, I knew deep inside I didn't really have a reason to be pissed at her.

Though I still didn't talk to her. Look, my morning mood is never great and since I'm a sleep addict as well as a chocoholic, my temperament kind of sucked.

At least I could fill up on one addicton, since they served chocolate cereal for breakfast. As soon as we sat down, I threw myself over the bawl of cereal - withouth milk to ruin the taste - and quickly consumed it. Though it may not have been a bar, chocolate is allways chocolate. Kati gave me a wierd look, however, as I finished off my second bowl of dry cereal.

"Seriously, shouldn't you have diabetes by now, or at least suffer from grave obesity or something?" I shook my head.

"Nope. Or well, I should, but I don't. Why I don't know, but not even death-threatening diabetes would stop me from eating chocolate."

"You're wierd." She shook her head, and I smiled.

"Love you too." Kati laughed softly when I repeated her words. "By the way, do you know anyone here that do haircuts?" I continued.

"Er, why do you ask, Random Child?" I rolled my eyes.

"Because I want to buy a dog. Seriously, what do you think? My bangs are way too long, I can barely read." It was true; they were hanging in my eyes, blocking my eyesight.

"Hm. Let's see." She thought for a moment. "There is Linda, the Picasso girl. She's actually quite good, but you'll probably turn up with an... Individual haircut." I simply stared at her. "Ok, so not Linda. Er... Oh, of course!" She seemed to make a mental facepalm at herself. "There's a guy here named Seth, who loves to cut people's hairs and do ans stuff. Yeah, he's kinda... Gay. But, he's really good at it. We have Arts together today, I could ask him then if you want to?" She seemed a bit exited, and I jumped to the conclusion that she either liked to create makeovers, or she liked Seth. If the second one was true, I felt sorry for her.

"Yeah, sure. As long as he don't make my hair look like a fucktard cut it, I'm happy." She simply smiled at me.

Then we realised we had about five minutes to our English class, so we got in a bit of panic and hurriedly ran back to our corridor to get the right books.

* * *

Ten minutes later, I was feeling about ready to commit suicide.

We had a substitute teacher, since Ms. Aldrin was gone. The substitute was a man who must've lived since the Ice Age and talked to us as if we were five. When I had decided to jump out of the window to get rid of the shit, Kati pushed a piece of paper to me.

_Am I the only one feeling ready to shoot the teacher?_

**No, **I quickly scrabbled back. **I'm seriously considering to throw myself out of the window.**

She snorted somewhat._ Don't do that, or I'll be sad!_

**Thank you for caring.**

_Not like that. I would be sad because then I wouldn't have a reason to talk to Seth later._

I raised my eyebrows at her, and she blushed a bit._ So what? I'm a girl, you know_.

**But I thought you said he was gay?**

_Yeah, but still. He's fucking hot._

**So what, you're gonna drool over him as he tried to get himself some buttsecks?**

Kati actually had a hard time holding back her laughter, an we had to put the conversation aside for a moment so that the sub wouldn't notice anything.

_Shut up and let me have a crush on him._

**Well, duh, I never forbid you from having a crush on anyone. I'm just thinking it's a bit stupid, that's all.**

_I'll honestly punch you if you don't stop._

**Speaking of wich, where the fuck did you learn to fight like that? And fucking **_**when**_** did you start kicking doors in?**

_The streets._

I looked up at her. She met my gaze and softly raised one eyebrow as if to say _yeah, so what?_ I shrugged at her.

**It's not like your average ten-year-old kid hangs out with taekwondo groups at the streets.**

_Well, I learned the taekwondo here. The streets was more like your normal street fight, the torture and kick-doors-in part._

**Torture?**

_Ok, so not torture. But I could have learned it._

**I don't care what you ****could**** have learned, you dork.**

_Fuck off. Anyway, I learned the show-no-mercy, punch-him-til-he-stops-moving, beat-him-with-a-stick type thing. Actually comes in handy when you get in fights._

**Oh, okey. So more the badass turn of things?**

She smiled. _Yeah, I guess you could call it that_.

We were interrupted by a lough cough and turned our attention back to the sub, who was staring at us with an extremely annoyed facial expression.

"Looks like we have two students who seems to have more important things to deal with than _paying attention_. Care to share it with us?" I felt my face heat up slightly. _Fuckfuckfuck... _I hated being busted by teachers. Kati, on the other hand, seemed completely calm.

"Oh, nothing special. I just showed Mello something I wrote a while ago, nothing that you'd have any interest in hearing." She smiled politely towards him, a favour he didn't return.

"Well, if it's so 'interesting' that you find it worthy of spending lecture time on, I'm sure the rest of the class would love to hear it."

Kati looked like she was fighting back a smile, while I was slightly panicking on the inside. _How can she be so fucking cool right now?_

"Okey, but it's you choise, Sir." She stood up; in the movement, she pulled out a paper from her notepad that was filled with her messy writings. I got slightly worried as she started; knowing Kati, this could be _anything_. "'Alexander suddely pressed himself towards me and locked his lips against mine in an intense kiss.'" _**OH DEAR GOD,**__ this is not gonna turn out well! _"'The wawe of lust that flooded me was to great to resist, and I felt my body working on it's own as I pushed myself against him, feeling my hands moving up to his hair to entangle my fingers in his raven locks. A lot of thoughts were flooding through me - _he's my best friend, he has a girlfriend, he's a guy _- but I really didn't care as he pushed me against the wall, removing his mouth from mine as he did so. I would have been dissapointed, had he not moved it to my neck, softly nipping and sucking at the exposed skin, slowly working his way down to my collarbone. I moaned out loud when Alexander suddenly ground his hips against my own, gently rubbing my throbbing erection against his own as-'"

"ENOUGH!" The sub suddenly yelled, interrupting her very abruptly. Kati stopped reding and turned her eyes to him. He had turned a wierd colour of purple, looking like he was going to pop a vein. "YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO READ THAT KIND OF... VULGARITIES AT MY LESSONS!" Kati had stayed completely unaffected so far, and now put on a face of complete innocence.

"But, Sir, you asked me to read it for you." She said, intentionally making her voice a bit more high-pitched than usual, giving an overall little girl-innocence kind of feeling. "I told you it may have been inappropiate, but you insisted."

I was trying so hard to keep myself from laughing as Kati totally manipulated the sub. I threw a quick look at the other students in the room. A lot of tem were bright red, while some giggled - mostly girls - and the boys either looked purely awkward or simply stared at Kati. Suddenly, I felt very proud to be her friend.

"Very well." The sub finally surrendered. "Hrm... You may all leave the class."

Me and Kati quickly got out of there, an put a safe distance between us and the classroom before we broke out in a totaly laugh hysterics. A lot of kids gave us wierd looks as Kati clutched her stomach and I myself was barely able to stand due to the heavy cramps that flowed through our bodies. Every time we looked at eachother, we broke down again.

Eventually we were sitting on the floor, finally being able to control our laughter that had melted into heavy giggles.

"His face, when you read that last line... Priceless!" I snorted, and she giggled again.

"I liked the wierd plum colour he turned into when I declared they were both guys... Seriously, does he have any problem with gay people, or what?"

We were catching our breaths - still giggling - when Matt suddenly appeared. He had showed his hands in his jeanspockets and were now staring at us with raised eyebrows. We had gotten a new strap for his goggles (made by an old rubber band) so I couldn't see his eyes. I felt kind of sad at the thought of his green orbs, hidden behind orange plastic.

"Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you guys? People think you've lost it."

"I'll tell you later." Kati shook her head, but stood up.

Luckily, we had been released from the English class fifteen minutes ahead, so I still had five minutes until my Maths started. I was still gigglish, and remained so for the rest of the day wich was, boringly, spend on my own.

* * *

With 'on my own', I mean none of my classes were with Matt or Kati, wich allways sucked. We didn't even have lunch at the same time... Either that, or we didn't find eachother. Apart from that, though, I loved it.

Okay, so Maths were as boring as ever, but then I had lunch and then History and German. The History class I spend on simply listening to the others as they talked, taking notes, just to be absolutely sure I knew where they were. And at the German class everybody were at different levels; so even though I was the only one to be a total beginner, no-one looked down at me; simply because we were all at different points of the language. I got more words to learn, pages and letters to study, etc etc.

So at the end of the day, I was quite happy with it. I made my way back to our corridor; since it was Monday, the walls were vibrating due to Kati. I shook my head as I dropped my books in our room.

When I got out of it, Matt appeared at the end of the corridor. We just shrugged at eachother before busting in Kati's room, wich she didn't seem to mind at all.

That whole week, she seemed totally exited, and I suspect it was due to a lot of reasons; That Seth had talked to her and actually seemed to enjoy her company (I send her off to Linda to talk about that); she had finally finished her π calculation, and she seemed to fucking freak out when Roger announced that that weekend, they would arrange a trip to London for the interested.

Appatantely, those kind of 'excursions' - Roger said that, I just had to name it. Fucking hilarious - happened from time to time. Simply, some kids went to London to do whatever. Mostly girls though; after all, I have to admit shopping in London is fucking _gorgeous_.

Kati, on the other hand, didn't seem to think of this as an opportunity to get a new wardrobe. She couldn't talk about anything else than the culture, and after about an hour I knew exactly what she wanted to do; go to Camden Lock Market and just run around to absorbe the 'culture'. (Though she would get a new pair of shoes; that was fucking neccesary.)

Me and Matt, on the other hand, didn't really see the excitement in that, so we stayed at Wammy's. The kids that were going went at 8AM that Saturday, so we were both fast asleep when she left.

I woke up to the soundeffects of Matt's GameBoy. Feeling unnaturally well-rested, I opened my eyes and lifted my head off the pillow to look at him. Matt was sitting cross-legged in his bed with his back against the wall.

I sighed and streched my arms oved my head, feeling my muscles strain comfortably.

"G'mornin'." I mumbled. Matt looked up for a second.

"'Yello. Slept well?" I nodded and he returned to his game. I rolled over to my side, opened the bedside table drawer and pulled out a chocolate bar. "Seriously, you're gonna get a heart attack if you continue like that." Matt mumbled as I snapped a piece of it. I gave him the finger.

"You're the one to talk. How late did you stay up with that game?" I pretended to count on my fingers. "About four AM? Yeah, that should be it." I finished dryly.

Matt snorted and shook his head. "For my best friend, you insult me a lot."

"Yeah, and you seem to be _so_ offended." I rolled my eyes, but then re-calculated his words and stopped. "Hang on. I'm your best friend?" He looked up at me and raised an eyebrow over his orange goggles.

"Well, duh. Who else?" He said sarcasticly. "I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not he most contact-seeking person here."

"I dunno, Kati?" I said. Seriously, he'd known her for years but still rated me as his best friend? Wierd.

"Well... Kati's not really my friend..." Matt paused, looking for the words. "She's more of a... How to describe it... Older sister? Yeah, something like that. Anyway, I don't see her as a friend. I see her as a blood relative. I know it sounds wierd, but..." He shrugged awkwardly.

"Uh, no, it's ok." I answered slowly, snapping another piece of my chocolate bar. "I'm not gonna say I understand, but I get your point." He nodded again and I decided to change the subject.

"What're you playing? If it's that wierd game with the italian dude and fruit princess, don't bother to explain."

"The Legend of Zelda."

"The Legend of what?"

"Zelda." He gestured for me to sit beside him without letting go of th GameBoy. I wrapped my sheet arnound me and walked over to his bed, sitting down next to him while watching the small screen. "It's about this guy named Link..."

"Shouldn't it be about Zelda?" I interrupted him. "Makes more sense, with the title and all."

"I'm getting there." He rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I'm Link, and my mission is to save Zelda from the evil forces of-"

"Ok" I cut in. "I'm not gonna understand shit if you try to explain. It's good enough for me to know you're the good guy that's on a mission to save a princess."

He laughed and shook his head. "Guess. But it's really not that complicated." I rolled my eyes.

"Whatever. Just beat the bad guys up and stop being focused on two things at the same time. It's freaky." He laughed againg and killed some enemy with his sword. I had a hard time keeping up with everything he did, since he did it all so quickly, but I didn't really care all that much. It was fun to just be there and watch him smash buttons. That day was full of... Nothing, actually.

Until dinnertime, when Kati got back. Eugh.

We had been sitting in our room - I was reading parts of my History book. Turns out, World War II was really interesting - when she bolted through the door, completely out of nowhere. I dropped the book and Matt jumped a bit when she all of the sudden stood in our room with her usual grin.

"Hi guys!" She said enthusiastically and closed the door.

"Let me guess." I said dryly, "Your day was awesome and now you're in love with some dude in London?"

She rolled her eyes and smacked me over the head as she sat down on my bed with a shopping bag. "Of course not. I wouldn't fall in love with some dude like that. I'd ask him out on a date first. But I did meet this awesome guy on Camden Lock... Oh, by the way Matt" He turned his head up at Kati who was digging up something from the bag, wich she threw at him. "New Mario game out, thought you'd like it. And I even got something for you, Mels."

Matt's face lit up and he threw himself off his bed to get into my bed instead, hugging Kati violently. "ZOMYGOD, thank you! I've been waiting for this for months!" Kati laughed and I had to join in. He was so adorable with that happyface. He was such a little dork.

"You glomp very hard for someone so small, you know that?" She said and ruffled his hair as he popped the new game into the console. Matt didn't even react, just sat down between us (my bed was getting a bit crowded) and crossed his legs. "Anyway, Mello." I turned my gaze to Kati, who held a small package in her hands. "I didn't know anything to buy you, so since there's only one thing I directly knew you'd like, here you go."

She gave me the small square box, and I knew what was in it before I even opened it. As soon as I had removed the brown string and carefully lifted the lid off, the smell of chocolate spread like a small cloud through the air. I smiled sofly at the eight small chocolate creams that lay in it and turned my gaze back up to Kati. "You didn't have to." I knew she had done it mostly for the gesture (the chocolate wasn't fancy or anything) but I was still grateful and slightly moved by it. After all, she had bothered to get me anything at all.

"Well, I was buying Dorkee here a game" She smiled back at me, "So I had to get you something. Besides, I love making gifts to people. I know it isn't that much, but.." She shrugged apologetically.

"Hey, don't worry. I don't care wether it's much or not, I'm still happy for it."

Something flashed through here eyes for a split second (I still have a hard time deciding what. Sorrow? Angst? Worry? Relief?) and then her smile broadened. "After all, you are my best friend." Kati said, and I laughed. She scowled. "What?"

"Nothing." I assured her, chuckling. "Just a thing Matt mentioned earlier."

"Stop having so many in-jokes. It's no fun." I laughed again, and both her and Matt joined me.

**

* * *

**_**leaves**_** in 2004, wich means that this is set in 2001-02.**

AN: I just noticed something vey disturbing about the time in this fic. You see, I didn't really do that much research (and I'm stupid as well) so I thought that Mello left Wammys in 2006, making this play out in 2003-2004 or something like that, but then I got my _13: How to Read _back and realise I've ben screwing up completely. Mello actually

**I don't think I've done too many mistakes, though, mostly with Kati's music (a lot of her favourite bands don't exist) but to spare everyone the trouble of editing and shit I'm just going to let it be and draw time back to -01 now. So that is when this takes place, and I'll try not to make any major mistakes further on, though I won't go back and fix eventual mistakes; simply because it doesn't really make any difference.**

**By the way, just so you know, Kati is born in early 1989. (Wich means her 21'st birthday would be coming up soon... Wierd)**

**And thank you so much to the reviewers!  
(Though, I must say, it feels kinda lame for me to go absolutely nuts over eight reviews... But whatever. I still love you.)**


	10. Confusion

**AN: So, here we are again...**

**I had trouble writing this. Wich surprised me a bit, since I haven't actually struggled this much with previous chapters, but I guess things like this happens sometimes...**

* * *

I sighed again, with a smile on my face. "But it's so fun when you don't understand anything." Kati smacked me over the back of my head friendly.

"Well, I don't think so, so stop it." She demanded with a small pout on her face. I laughed again and ducked a second blow.

"Stop hitting me!" I said and held my hands up in defence.

"But it's so fun to see you beg for mercy." She shot back with a mischiefous grin on her face. I crouched up next to Matt, who was still sitting between us, in an attempt to get away from her. Kati laughed and Matt snorted.

"Sure, sure, hide behind the geek." He mumbled. "Just don't flinch and make me die, ok?" I rolled my eyes at the nerdiness of his words. Seriously, Kati was delivering very humiliating punches and he worried about some italian plumper dude? Geez...

"Anyway, Kat" I said, trying to change the subject. "Did anything else happen in London?" She scowled at me.

"Wait. Since when do you call me Kat?"

"I dunno" I shrugged. "Since now?" She growled annoyedly and put her face in her hands.

"Why do people keep giving me nicknames?"

"Come on. Your alias is Kati, what'd you expect? There are so many ways to nickname something like that." She sighed deeply and muttered something about changing her identity. "But I asked you if anything else happened in London. Surely you didn't spend the whole day buying us chocolate and games?" She seemed to get visibly more cheerfull at the thought of it, and she raised her head to look at me over Matt's playing figure.

"Yeah, it was wonderful!" She said exitingly. "I went to Camden Lock and met this guy named Scott, who had a wondeful mohican..." Kati sighed with a dreemin expression on her face. "It was about four feet high and thick and blonde..." I rolled my eyes.

"Ok, I get it. Stop perving yourself up over a haircut, dammit!" She snorted and turned her gaze at me.

"But it was a fucking wonderful haircut. Linda brought her camera, she's got a picture of him. Anyway, I basicly spent the day running around Camden, talking to people with awesome clothes." She leaned back to the wall. "Oh, by the way, I got some new shoes." She lifted her right foot a bit to show a black boot with high shafts. "Y'now the awesome part? I didn't even pay for them." I raised an eyebrow.

"No? Who did? Scott?" She rolled her eyes at me and put her foot down again, crossing one leg over the other in the movement.

"Roger, believe it or not. You see, apparantely I 'needed a new pair of footwear' as he put it, so the bill's on Wammy's." She smirked a bit and Matt snorted behind his gameboy.

"You're making it sound like you didn't need a new pair of shoes. Just face it, your Converse's are kind of dead." Kati punched him lightly and he stuck her tongue out at her. I laughed.

"By the way" I said when they were on their way to a fight, "Where do you get your money from?"

"Oh, it's simple." Matt said. _Stupid multitasking ability..._ "We get money every month, about... 40 quid, I think?" He said.

"I get forty. You get thirty, and you" she looked at me, "Should get thirty-five. They add five quid every birthday." I scowled.

"But why?"

"What do you mean 'why'?"

"Well, why do they give us money? What do we do to deserve it?" She looked at me in a mixture of you're-a-wierdo and sympathy. (Kind of an odd look, actually, but she pulled it off. Don't ask me how.)

"We don't, really." She explained. "The whole money-thing must've been Wammy's idea, because we simply get them for nothing. The first day of every month, we recieve money at a bank account they have raised in our name. Roger, however, are in charge of the cards until you turn 13, to make sure we aren't buying stuff that's simply stupid when he can't control it. So, right now, he's the one that decides when we're allowed to spend money." She shrugged.

"Oh, ok... So, I got money?"

"You do indeed. But you can't really use it, so it's a bit pointless." I chuckled softly.

"I don't care. I'mma be fucking rich soon!"

We laughed together (yes, Dorkee was paying attention, unbelivable but true) and then Kati took up her story-telling about Camden. Seriously, I could've sworn she had wet dreams about it.

* * *

About two hours later, around 9PM, we found ourselves in Kati's room, where she tried to teach me how to play the guitar. I was struggling on an epic scale; I didn't understand shit about scales or chords, or why the fuck you had to have A, Am, A7 and so on, when I was having trouble remembering one of them.

I groaned and rested my head on the black instrument as Kati tried to explain that I was holding my left index finger on the wrong fret.

"I give up." I said, sending an angry glare to the guitar. "Why did I even try to begin with?"

"I don't really know, actually." Kati replied, leaning her arms on the brown guitar in her own knee and then putting her head on her hands. "I think it was something along the lines that you claimed that you're a bigger genius than me, then callenging me to find one thing I know that you couldn't learn in an hour. And now, we've been at this for about fifty-four minutes and you still don't know the difference between the E and A strings." The mocking and triumphant tone in her voice was impossible to miss.

However, I was never able to send a reply back due to the door. Or, well, not the door in itself ('I would answer you, but there's a door here, so I can't' (ridiculous)) but the fact that someone knocked at it. Kati turned around to face it.

"Yeah?" She called out, rather loud. (Apparantely, her room had been sound isolated a couple of months ago, when people got tired of the music coming out of it at 2.30AM.) I took the opportunity to lift the guitar strap over my head and removing the instrument from my knee.

"Kati? Would you mind to open the door, I want to talk to you." Kati froze. So did I, halfway through the moment of laying the guitar down on the floor, and Matt, who was sitting at Kati's bed with his GameBoy. Disturbed by the lack of answer, Roger knocked again. "Kati? The door is locked so I know you're in there; besides, you answered when I first knocked."

Me and Kati's eyes connected in slight panic. Neither me nor Matt should be in her room at this hour and if Roger busted us, we'd be in fuckloads of trouble. She then got up, quickly lifted the brown guitar out of her knee and walked over to her closet, pulling Matt up from her bead in the same movement.

She had a different kind of closet than me and Matt; while ours was more like a cupboard, Kati's was kind of built into the wall. Don't ask me why, but right now it was very practical as she opened the door and pushed Matt in. I quickly followed him and she closed the door after whispering to us to stay quiet until he had left.

I sighed and sat down on the heap of clothes in there (she may not have liked to hang it all up, but at least they didn't smell; somethimes I wished I was a girl) and Matt slumped down next to me. The only light came from his GameBoy, but now he had turned the sound down and paused the game.

We heard Roger enter the room, Kati greeting him coldly, and then he must've closed the door. I could imagine Kati standing leaned against one wall, her arms crossed over her chest in annoyance; Roger standing at the closed door with his prying eyes on her. And ohmygod, that sounded so wrong. I didn't mean he was looking her up or anything, just staring into her eyes with that freaky neutral look on his face.

"I want to talk to you about something that happened earlier this week." Kati most likely raised an eyebrow, because Roger sighed. "You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

"Depends what you're talking about, don't it?"

"I'm talking about the fact that you got into a fight with four of the boys here."

"Oh, you mean the time a few days ago where they beat Matt up so badly he could barely walk?" The fury in her voice was unmistakable; it would most likely take her a lot of time to stop hating hose guys.

"Kati, I can't discuss that, since young Matt haven't come to talk about it with me; if he was involved, it couldn't have been so bad."

"Fuck you, Roger. What do you want?" She despised him real bad. I could feel my own feelings heating up in anger; he really didn't give a shit. Matt had stiffened next o me, and I looked at him quickly. He was staring into the paused screen of his Gameboy.

"Why did you get in a fight with those boys?" Roger said with mild annoyance in his voice. "Did you know you gave one of them a concussion?"

"Well, I didn't know, but I suspected something like that." The smirk was visible in her voice as she continued, "I guess Keith has a nice couple of broken ribs as well? I did deliver him quite a badass kick." She was mocking him, and I fucking loved it.

"Don't talk about it as if it's something to be proud of!" Roger actually raised his voice now. "Why did you take violence actions upon those poor boys?"

"Because those 'poor boys' practically abducted Matt!" She shouted in return. "They took him to Mika's room and beat him up for God knows how long! Are you aware that when we found him, he was _this close_ to passing out?"

"If anything like that happened, you should have gone to my office instead of mauling them!"

"Yeah, and you care so fucking much!" She screamed at him. "Because you have done so much to help him all of the other times somethings have happened! We both know you don't give shit about him, wich means that I have to take care of my family on my own!"

I blinked. What? Er, that was a bit wierd. I looked at Matt, who was playing with the hem of his left sleeve. He didn't look at me and I frowned slightly.

"Family?" Roger's voice mirrored my own feelings of confusion and astonishment. "That boy is not your _family_, Kati. Even though you may be good friends you do not have a bloodline connection..."

"Shut the fuck up, you stupid bastard." Steps were heard as she walked over the room. "We do have a bloodline connection, so just zip it." Roger gasped at something and my frown visibly deepened. However, Matt closed his GameBoy so that I couldn't see him. Seriously, _what is going on?_

"Kati..." Roger's voice was dark with anger. "What is this?"

"It's my family. The only one I have left, in fact." She was ice cool again; I could imagine the hard expression cut in her face as she showed him whatever it was that upser him so much. "Not that you'd care." Then she said something I couldn't catch. Or, well, I heard it but didn't understand it. It sounded like 'abor', whatever the fuck that was.

My confusion didn't exactly diminish when Roger replied something in a foreing language, and then Kati's aggressive response. I concluded it must've been Swedish, but I couldn't understand why the _fuck_ they were speaking it or how _Roger_, out of all people, knew it. Their conversation was kept at the hissing stage, and since I didn't get shit I decided to focus on Matt. He had flipped his game on again and was playing away.

After watching him mash buttons for a while, I realised the other room had grown quiet. How long it had been since they stopped talking I had no idea, but I assumed Roger'd left. Though, I didn't get out of the closet; he might still be there, but not talking. However, as soon as I thought that, Matt got up and opened the door.

Following him out of the closet, I located Kati on the window frame. She liked sitting there, apparantely. Her back was turned against me, so I couldn't actually see her face but the smell of smoke was unmistakable. I frowned. _She smokes?_

"Kati, what the fuck." Matt said wearily. She turned her head to look at him. A lit cigarette hanged loosely between her lips. She looked a bit worn-out. "I thought you quit."

"I did." She said, removing it from her lips. I walked over to sit on one of the chairs we'd been occupying before. Kati turned her head back to exhale smoke out of the open window. Seriously, we were approximatley 32 feet from the ground outside, and she had it fucking open while sitting next to it? Seriously, I was starting to suspect she was suicidal.

"Well, if you quit, why are you getting yourself cancer?" Matt's annoyance was umistakable and Kati simply looked out of the opened window; however, her eyes were so empty I guessed she didn't look at anything in particular.

"Je lui ai montré, Matt." I scowled. What the fuck? "Je lui ai montré mes cicatrices." He blinked.

"Kati... Pourquoi?" I groaned loudly, drawing their attention.

"Can you two just stop it?" I said, glaring at them. "Just stop it. Ok, I get it, you have some big, dark secret, but come on. I'm your best friend, so just stop it with all the secrets and... Fucking hell, _French_? What's up with that?" I stared at them. Kati actually chuckled.

"Yeah, I knew you'd react at that one." She raised the cigarette to her lips again and slowly inhaled as she finished it off. Then she flicked it out the window. "Well, to begin with, how much of the conversation did you pick up?"

"Well, everything, until you turned to fucking Swedish. By the way, how the fuck did Roger learn that?" She shook her head and I knew she wasn't going to tell me.

"Long story. Anyway, I assume the part you're questioning is when I said me and Matt are blood relatives. That's... A bit hard to explain, actually." She looked over at him. He looked back, and they seemed to have some freaky mind-exchanging moment, because Matt nodded once and then looked at me.

"About a year ago" he began slowly. "Kati and I were friends. Like, siblings without actually being siblings..." He paused to think over his words. "I suck at storytelling, so I'm just going to say it the way it happened, ok?" Sounds like a good idea to me, at least. "To make a long story short, we wanted to become blood relatives and exchanged blood." Wait, fucking WHAT?

"Whoa, hang on!" I shouted. "Could you please take that again, please?" Matt sighed and rolled up his shirt about two inches on his left forearm. There, faded but still very visible, was a scar. It consisted of two lines, one horizontal and one vertical, lying over eachorther to form a plus. Each line was about 3/4 of an inch long and cut out with high precision.

I looked up at Kati, who jumped down on the floor and walked over to us while rolling up her own left sleeve. On her wrist was an identical scar. I turned my eyes back to their faces, and I could feel the shock written in my own as she chuckled.

"Yeah, I was kind of drunk when I came up with the idea." She shook hed head with a small smile on her face. "Basically, we cut out wrists and then held them against eachother. I don't know wether it actually worked, but I like to think some of Matt's blood is in my veins."

I simply stared at them. "Okey... That's... Sorry, but that's freaky. Seriously. And what do you mean with 'yeah, I was drunk'?"

"I mean I was drunk. Y'now, when you drink a lot of alcohol and end up doing wierd stuff?" She rolled her black shirt down again, and I was a bit happy she did.

"So, what, you just stole booze and then decided to go cut your wrists, and on top of that came up with the brilliand idea to share your fucking _blood_ with someone?"

"Well, I guess you could put it that way." She shrugged.

"Okey, I need some time to think of how the fuck I'm supposed to react to that... So... I'll go back to our room and freak out now." Kati laughed again and ruffled my hair.

"Whatever." I shook my head and glared angrily at her as I walked towards the door. "By the way, I dunno if I told you but Seth said he'll give you a haircut tomorrow."

"Thanks for letting me know." I muttered and closed the door behind me. The only thing in my had right then was to get chocolate, and then think of what the fuck I was going to do.

After I had planted myself on my bed, I snapped a piece of the chocolate bar and slowly let it melt in my mouth. I sighed softly and lay down on the bed with my thoughts screaming in my head. I had absolutely no idea what to make out of this, I didn't even know if I was overreacting or not. Letting out another sigh, I turned around to lay on my stomach and buried my head inthe pillow.

**

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**

Matt POV:

_**(Yeh, I'm actually gonna try this out... Don't hate me.)**_

Mello closed the door behind him and my eyes flickered back to Kati. She walked back to her windowframe and gracefully climbed overher bead to sit down on it. A frown was plastered onto her forehead and I shook my head slightly. Picking up her harmonica, I called for her attention.

"Hey." She looked up at me. "Think fast." I chucked the small instrument at her, and one of her hands snapped up to catch it. She had an incredible ball sense, and I would probably never get used to her ability to catch things. Kati brought the harmonica toher lips and music flowed out of it, forming a sad melody that made me feel a bit hollow inside.

Yeah, her music had that impact on me. Live with it.

"What do you think he'll do?" I said. She shrugged at me and the music paused when she answered.

"He'll most likely freak for a while, but then realise we're us and he just have to accept the wierdness in our personalities."

"I knew you should've read Psycolology." I shook my head and she laughed sofly. "Now, are you going to tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"Tell me what you and Rog discussed in Swedish?" She paused, took a deep breath and then resumed her playing, looking out of the window with a face that I knew meant she wasn't really there. I also knew it'd be pointless to push matters further, so I just opened my GameBoy.

"I still can't believe you told him about the scars, Katy." I said, the nickname drawing her attention. "That was extremely stupid, you know?"

"I know, Mattie. But I'm a stupid person, what'd you excpect?" Her voice was lacking of emotion, though I was probably the only person that would've noticed.

"You're shutting again." I calmly reminded her. Kati didn't even nod.

"Yeah, I've been doing that a lot lately, it seems." She'd have nightmares tonight; whatever they had been discussing that she didn't want me to know, it had been about before. And then she allways had nightmares; I just had to prepare myself for it. Yay.

I took up my last savings and then made Mario jump over Koopas in order to continue on his quest to save Peach. Kati resumed her harmonica song. How many times had we've been like that for the last eighteen months? Me playing some dorky video game while she produced beautiful music to help her think of whatever she was thinking about when she was shutting.

Once I had asked her, but she only laughed and ruffle my hair. _"Trust me"_ Kati had said, still with the smile on her face, _"My brain is way too complicated for you to understand it. Or for me to understand it. If you could listen to my thoughts, you'd go insane after five minutes." _I didn't doubt it; whatever it was that was going on inside of her head, it should probably stay there.

So I just smashed buttons, waiting for Mello to clear his thoughts up. For now, that'd be enough.

* * *

**AN: Is that a plot I see coming up? I think so!  
****When I was struggling with this, I realised the plot so far has basicly been non-existent, so... Something's gotta happen', right?  
N****ah, I dunno... I tried Matt out. Eugh... He's so har dto write! At least I think so... O_o**

**Oh, btw. W****e pass dubbel digits with this, and I'm proud to say that this is now declared the longest story I've ever written, so yay me!**

**Wanna share your thoughts? **_**Review!**_


	11. Okay, here goes

Hello, guys.

I know you probably hate me for not updating in... What is it? A month? Fuck, that's a lot of time. O_O  
By the way, before I get started, Merry Christmas (if your christmas is today, mine was yesterday - in Sweden, we celebrate on christmas eve) and I hope you have a happy holidays. :D

So, here goes.

You'll probably get all dissapointed (or not) now, but I'm setting this story to a pause.

I just don't know what to do with it anymore. I started CWGP without really planning any kind of plot, so I have absolutely no idea where all this shit is going. Literally, I've got no fucking clue to what I'm writing. And sure, I could just go on and write a 30-chapter story full of very much nothing and lame plot bunnies, but I neither like that kind of writing or that kind of story very much, so instead I'm putting CWGP on hold until I get some kind of plot idea or just... You know, something to work with on this one.

Because really, you must admit that up until now I've mostly just let random stuff happen to a couple of characters and been hoping it'd lead up to something worth reading. And I tend to say that a lot: 'You need a plot. You can't just have a bunch of random shit happening to your characters and expect that to sell your movie!' And that's why I'm putting this aside for now.

Wether or not I'll pick it up again I don't know, but I kinda hope so since I really like Kati... (Mostly since she's based on a person I know. There, I said it. Oh noes!)

So, if I post some other story to FF with Matt and Mello (whom I also love,) she may be in it. _May_ be. Note that. May. (And now I'm sick of the word 'may', wich also happens to be the month I'm born in. Random. xP)

Anyway.

I'm sorry, if you liked this. I'm probably gonna continue this one later on, but it'll take a while if so. I'll leave everything up, in case anyone would be interested to read it.  
Well, up until whatever...

Sorry.

_._

**ArmourDuck**


	12. GAAAH

**AN: I'M BACK!**

**Gah. To begin with, a million apologies for the long wait. Please don't kill me.**

**I was trying to figure out a plot, but then I realised something: This does't exactly need a plot. Or, well, the plot **_**could**_** exist of random stuff happening to my characters, ne? If I'll be able to pull that off and still have at least two readers, I'll be proud. So here you go, a somewhat pointless story that is resurrected thanks to three awesome reviewers: PandaChanTheFirst, Kittykata and CharizardCyndi for re-inspiring me to this. You are asm C:**

**Oh, and it may seem that I suddenly changed the way of writing around the middle, and that's because I wrote the first half about two months ago, so my writing style's changed a bit since then.**

**I'll be quiet now. Enjoy the plotless awesomeness :D**

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When I got back to our room, Mello was sleeping. A half-eaten bar of chocolate rested in his hand, and I chuckled quietly at the sight of it. He looked so cute like that, with the long bangs covering half of his face. They were right; he really needed a haircut.

I went to bed without changing, since I wasn't planning on resting much anyway. However, the second I let my breath out and relaxed, I fell asleep.

**So, back to Mello POV!**

I snapped my eyelids open. Solid darkness met me until I got used to the lack of light. My breathing was paced, though I had no idea why. My thoughts were a bit panicked for a second, until I realised why I had woken up. Someone was screaming.

The screams had stopped for about two seconds, but then they continued. I sat up in confusement and slight shock, and then Matt jerked up from his bed. He was in there? Well, obviously. He cursed loudly and stappled out of his bed before darting out of our room. I sat on my sheets in total confusement as he opened a door and the screams became noticably louder. I scrambled to my feet and got out in the hallway. The door to Kati's room was open, and I concluded she was the person responsible for waking half the mansion up.

_Fuck, does that girl have lungs!_ Then it got quiet, the screams replaced by loud sobs. Gaining control over my body, I stuck my head inside the room to find out what the fuck was going on.

Kati was sitting in her bed, sheats wrapped around herself. She had drawn her knees up to her chin and was shaking from the sobs that flowed through her body. Matt sat next to her with his arms around Kati's trembling feature, one hand holding her blonde head to the heap of his neck. It appeared as though he was whispering soothing things into the messy locks.

Matt seemed to notice I was there, because he turned his face toward me - he didn't wear his goggles, so my eyes connected with his.

"Nightmares." Matt whispered, his voice still a bit hoarse from sleep. I nodded. Kati had grown quiet, but I still suspected she was crying since her body didn't stop shaking. Not being quite sure wether I should leave or not, I hesitated a bit but since Matt just sighed slowly and started to stroke her hair, I judged I could stay at the doorpost.

After a while Kati calmed down. Her shakings slowly faded, and soon Matt gently lay her down on the bed again, tucking her in a cocoon of covers and shhets. She snuggled into it and let out a satisfied sigh. I smiled gently as Matt got up and we left the room, quietly closing the door behind us.

I didn't ask anything, just lied down on my back and watched Matt as he sat down on his own bed. I broke a piece off of the chocolate bar I'd been eating previously and chewed softly on it. My thoughts flowed around the subject of nothing, as I wasn't really in the mood to think about all the stuff that had been going on. Don't get all bitchy about how I was 'running away from my problems', because if you do I will kill you out of sheer annoyance. I wasn't running from my problems, just... avoiding them.

However, Matt very rudely interrupted my thoughts. "So, you know how you're gonna react soon?" I snapped my head up.

"Huh?"

"You said you wasn't sure how to react to... Well. Do you know now?" Insert awkward moment here.

"Um... I guess... I'll just have to take the two of you as you are, and kinda... I dunno, accept the fact that you're completely nuts?" He laughed, I frowned. "Hey! Serious moment here!"

"Sorry, it's just the way you said it." He shook his head. "But thanks for 'accepting' us."

"Just promise me there aren't any more dark and deadly secrets out there." I growled, "Because if there are I'm not sure I'm going to withstand it."

"Sure thing. If any more arises, they're either created in the future or they belong to Kati. Ok?" I smirked.

"Sounds great. Now go to sleep, you dork."

"Hey, you're the one that eats chocolate at three in the morning!"

* * *

When I woke up, Matt was still asleep. His clock said it was about 11.30 AM. I growled and smashed my head in the pillow. My brain was working on it's own and mentally slapped me in a command to get up. Kati had scheduled a haircut today... And I didn't know when.

I must've fallen asleep with my clothes on; they were okay, though, so I didn't bother to change. While my body screamed for more rest, I forced it to get up. After all I slept about seven hours so it was more than enough. I quickly dragged my fingers through the messy, blonde thing that supposedly was my hair and then got out of the room.

Quiet music streamed out of Kati's room, so I decided it was okay to knock. Which I did.

"Yeah?" her muffled voice came out to me.

"Can I come in?"

"Sure. Door's unlocked."

I turned the knob and opened it. Kati was sitting on the windowpane (_again? Seriously, what the fuck?_) and turned her head when I walked in. The window was fully opened and I could hear birds sing outside of it. _How cliché is that?_ I raised an eyebrow and closed the door behind me. Leaning against it, I crossed my arms.

"Isn't it a bit suicidal to sit like that?" She snorted and turned her face back to the world outside.

"Why do you think I'm doing it?" she asked dryly. My eyes widened a bit and I blinked, like the poor naïve little 11-year-old I was.

Ok, so not so much of the 'poor little naïve' thing, but you get the point.

"Hang on... Please tell me you didn't mean that the way I think you did?"

"Don't worry, it was a lame joke. I'm not suicidal." She sounded a tad bored, but her face expression (though I admit I could only see about half of it, shut up) was a bit... blank. "Did you want anything, Mels?" I furrowed my eyebrows.

"Since fucking when do you call me Mels?" She smiled.

"Since you got an alias that's so easily nicknamed." I rolled my eyes and she laughed.

"Rip-off moron..." Kati snorted in response, still with a smile on her face. "Anyway, I did want something. You said this Seth dude would give me a haircut today, right?"

"What about it?"

"Well, I realised that I don't know a few things about this. One" I held up a finger. "When? Two" Held up another finger. "Where is his room, and Three" Another one. "Who _is_ Seth?" Kati turned her head to me, saw the confused expression on my face, and chuckled lightly.

"What time is it?"

"Err, about... quarter to twelve?"

"Then it's in fifteen minutes. I'll go with you, so you won't get lost." She lumped off her windowpane and walked over the room. Opening the door, I walked out before her and she followed me. "So... No more questions, or what?"

"Er..." I said awkwardly. "This is gonna sound so wrong, but... He's the one that's gay, right?" She looked lazily at me, saw the most likely strange look on my face, probably read my mind and then had a total laughing fit.

"Don't worry." She managed. "Seth's not... Just, don't worry. I mean, he's into guys, but he's not a child-molesting rapist." She still had small giggles and I glared at her. "Sorry, but your face... Unpayable!"

"Glad that me being afraid of rape amuses you." I said dryly, and Kati reached out a hand to ruffle my hair.

"I told you not to worry, twonk." I frowned.

"Twonk? Kati, I know you're into this whole British thing... But 'twonk'? Is that even a word?"

"No idea. It sounded good to say." She shrugged. "I guess it's some wierd transformation from twat or something. I dunno."

"So you just said a completely random word and hoped I'd get it?"

"Pretty much. I do that a lot, you know."

"Whatever. Are we there yet?" She rolled her eyes.

"'Are we there yet'? It's not like we're going to fucking France!"

"Fuck you. You get my point."

"I do get it, and yes. It's two doors away." I glared at her and she smiled at me. "Oh, and one more thing about Seth." We stopped in front of a door with '08' on it. I got the feeling that this wasn't a bedroom as much as a studio of some kind, since it lay a bit far away from our dorm.

"Huh?" I raised my eyebrows slightly. Now what?

"Don't freak out when you see him. Ok?" Before I could express the _'Wait, WHAT THE FUCK is that supposed to mean?_' that my inside was screaming, Kati raised her hand and knocked on the door.

Two seconds later, I heard a muffled 'come in' from the room. Kati opened the door and stepped in, while I was standing at the doorpost for a few seconds before I recovered from the slight feeling of panic I had.

Once I had built up the nerve to get in the room (I was worried about my hair, so what?), I realized I had been right before. This wasn't a bedroom, it was a studio.

The room itself was a bit bigger than a bedroom, had white walls and a big window right across the room that let in an abundance of light. Seriously, my eyes almost hurt for a few seconds. At the left was a typical barber chair in front of a big mirror, while the other side had two normal chairs with a table. No magazines though, thank God. I never liked those.

But I barely spent a second scanning the room, since my eyes were quickly drawn to the infamous Seth himself. Don't blame me. He was the only real click of colour in the whole room. Oh yeah, trust me. It was colourful.

His hair was neon blue. Blue. Neon blue. The cut didn't say much at the moment - it was really flat, if that's anything - but I guessed that was mostly because it wasn't styled.

Do I sound calm? Probably. But, trust me, I wasn't. I was _very fucking far _from calm.

His hair was blue. NEON BLUE. Now, I don't mind people with neon hair colours at all, don't think I do, but I didn't want it on myself. And my little eleven-year-old-mind was sure he was going to dye my hair green, or something. (Which, now, seems absolutely ridiculous. Like, why would he do that? But back then, it seemed highly possible.)

I stared at the back of his head for a few seconds, before he turned to me with a smile on his face.

"You're Mello, right?" A small note here: If I had commented before on Kati talking british, it was nothing compared to this guy. Not that I noticed that at his first three words spoken to me, but this is written a lot later. In case you haven't caught that yet. "I'm Seth."

I nodded once and completely missed the hand he reached out to me, which must've made the atmosphere a bit awkward. (Especially since I was still staring at him.)

"Hey? World to Mello?" I jerked my head to the right and found Kati leaning against the wall a few feet away, arms crossed over her cheast. "What's wrong?" She looked a bit concerned, odd enough.

"Kati, please." I squealed. She raised her eyebrows in surprise and the concerned look grew a bit.

"Mello, what-"

"I DON'T WANT TO HAVE GREEN HAIR!"

Awkward silence.

Okey, so now I was starting to regret that outburst. Just as I was starting to think about what I had just said, Kati growled. Opening my eyes (I must've pinched them shut), I watched her facepalm and then turn the movement to pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Seriously- No, wait, I'm not even going to say anything. Really, Mello..." Seth, on the other hand, smiled again.

"Don't worry. I would never dye anyone's hair unless they asked me to." I turned my face to him, and I'm pretty sure I adopted the 'poor little naïve 11-year-old' look I was talking about before pretty well. I can only imagine how stupid _that_ looked.

"Really?"

"I promise."

Now, to spare you the enormous amount of awkwardness that followed the next thirty minutes, I'm going to do a quick summary.

Seth cut my bangs about half an inch, we then had a small argument about the rest of my hair, which he ended up shortening an inch. Kati sat on his windowpane and did whatever the fuck she did. I wasn't paying attention to her, I was too busy making sure Seth didn't secretly dye my hair green, thank you very much.

He finished up about half an hour after we had gotten there, and I must admit that my hair looked the best it had in years. Now, it was more like a mixture between a page and a bowl cut, while it previously had just been... Something. I tried to ignore the fact that last time 'I got a haircut, it had been my mother who had fixed it. Or at least until I was alone. **[1]**

As I jumped out of the chair and Seth started to put all the combs and scissors away, I got a bit curious. He had already assured me that I wouldn't have to pay him, since he dind't look at this as a job, more like a fun hobby; but I couldnät help but wonder who, exactly, had funded all this shit. Surely, it wasn't him - I seriously doubted any of us could raise that kind of money.

"Hey, Seth." I said, and he looked up from what he was doing and gave a small 'hm?' sound. "I'm not really sure how to say this, so whatever, who helped you to afford all of this?"

He smiled and turned back to cleaning everything up.

"Wammy. Who else?"

"But... Why?"

"Well," He shrugged and pulled out a broom, sweeping up the blonde hair he had removed from my head. "Wammy knows, as we do, that not all of us are going to become L, so when we get a bit older they help funding us if we've found a career that we find interesting. Me, for example; Wammy helped me with the studio and most of the equipment, so I cut people's hair for free. If I'll dye it, though, I will have to pay the dye myself. Which means, that if you change your mind about that green hair, you'll have to pay me for dying it." His smile broadened. "But that's just for the color. I do all of this because I love it. Styling is kind of my specialty, and it's totally awesome." I nodded in response, but one thing he'd said made me furrow my eyebrows.

"Hang on. Who is L?"

The look Seth and Kati exchanged at that was impossible to miss, and I frowned again. _Oh, for fucks sake. Now what?_

"Never mind." Kati frowned and rubbed her eyes with one of her hands. "L's just a bloke we all look up to. I'll explain to you when I figure out the best way to do that without making it seem strange." She walked up to me and gently shoved me to the door. "No c'mon, we got to get back before Matt thinks we've ditched him."

I said goodbye to Seth and then left the room with her, still musing over the way my bangs felt against my forehead. It had been a while since they weren't hanging down in my eyes.

* * *

Once we got back to me and Matt's room, the question of 'who the fuck is L' had buried itself in the back of my brain, to be replaced by other stuff. Like how exceedingly annoying a 12-year-old girl could be when she was fangirling onver a boy she liked.

The fact that Kati was crushing on Seth hadn't made itself all that apparant while we were there, but as soon as we got out she seemed to have some kind of emotional meltdown which I can best describe in four words: American. Highschool. Girl. Movie.

Come on, you know _exactly_ what I mean by that.

By the time I entered our room, I was about ready to slam my head into the wall in an attempt to get her to talk about something else. It was very easy to forget that Kati was, in fact, a soon-to-be teenage girl, but now it was painfully apparant. Ugh.

Matt looked up as we entered the room, taking a moment away from his GameBoy.

"Nice haircut." He commented. "Makes you look more like a girl, but it fits you." As he returned to whatever his game was called, I debated for a second wether to be amused or pissed. I chose amused and chuckled lightly at him before settling myself down on his bed.

"Would you do me a favor, Kati?" He added after a few seconds of almost-silence filled of her nervous blabbering about wether Seth liked her or not.

"Yeah?"

"Shut up. Seriously, my ears are going to start bleeding." She raised her eyebrows, very much alike the Kati I knew, and I inwardly sighed in relief. "Seth likes you. I don't know if it's more than friendship, but I highly doubt that. He's gay. Get over it." Kati groaned and dumped her butt on my bed, hiding her face in her hands.

"But I love him!" This actually earned her a look of increditiliby from Matt.

"Oh, come on. You do not love him. You have a crush on the guy, but you don't love him."

"Whatever. I can't stop myself from liking him."

"No, but you _can _stop yourself from talking about him 24/7."

I zoned out from their nabbing and laid down on Matt's bed, resting my head on his feet. My eyes felt a bit heavy, reminding myself that I had gotten up way too early and that I had every right to recover some of that well-needed rest.

Okay, I was lazy. Whatever.

Closing my eyes, I rolled over to face the wall, still with my head on Matt's feet. And so, to the soft sound of their friendly nagging, I fell asleep.

**[1] Yes, the haircut I'm talking about is the one he's got in **_**13: How To Read**_**, in Ohba's design part. Go look it up, on Mello, it's the one in the middle.**

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AN: So... How is that for a comeback-chapter? Not too bad, I hope. Sorry if I dissapointed anyone, but it's my story so I can do whatever I want with it :D

**Erhm... Nothing more to write here. I'll start working on the naxt chapter instead. Bye =3**

**Note: Reviews make Duckie happy and inspired! c:**

**... Okey, you can have a cookie if you review. **

**Braibing readers FTW! **

**ArmourDuck**


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